I think there are two types of patients: those who would prefer to be treated by Dr. House treated, the others by Bergdoktor Martin Gruber or George Clooney alias Dr. Doug Ross, in short, an empathetic, warm-hearted doctor who, unlike the emotionally disturbed Dr. House says, “We treat diseases, not people.”
I’m the house guy. I want medication, injections, machines, operations. Viruses, bacteria and other enemies should be destroyed quickly. It’s probably a man thing, like action movies. On the other hand, if you like romantic comedies – she hits him, he’s a beast, but through her he discovers the power of love – you might want empathy and affection above all from a doctor.
I am writing this because I was amazed at the intensity of the reactions to my plea in WELT a few days ago for tolerating homeopathy. More precisely: for the maintenance of corresponding health insurance benefits for patients and further training for doctors. Although I had written that I thought homeopathy was scientific nonsense, I have been repeatedly told that it is nonsense.
Although I had shown that the expenses of the funds (in which the patients of homeopathic doctors also pay) for homeopathic remedies amount to much less than one cent per contribution euro, the engaged people wrote again and again that they did not want to spend any money on this nonsense.
My health insurance company, TK, pays up to 100 euros per calendar year for the “initial and follow-up anamnesis”, the “homeopathic analysis” and the “search for suitable medicines” as well as for “non-prescription but pharmacy-only medicines of phytotherapy, homeopathy and anthroposophy “.
I would get pimples with such an anamnesis, but I know people who are convinced that only the homeopathic doctor was able to help them – for example with a migraine. I have never heard from any of these people that their doctor discouraged them from vaccination or tried to treat serious illnesses with globules.
One of the fiercest critics of my contribution is the ENT doctor Christian Lübbers, spokesman for the “Informationsnetzwerk Homöopathie”, who invented the term “globucalypse”. In a tweet, Dr. Lübbers: “Homeopathy may be neither the most expensive nor the most serious problem in our healthcare system – but it has the clearest facts. If it is not possible to draw conclusions even then, it will never succeed on issues such as antibiotic resistance, opponents of vaccination or climate change.”
So you hit the sack and mean the donkey. There is no “globucalypse”. One wants to make an example of homeopaths in order to more effectively get on the fur of opponents of vaccination and deniers of climate change. I’ve always been there. Only I plead for less wrath. And for a finding that Dr. House does not fit: medicine is both more and less than science. It is healing art.