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Klaus Holetschek is currently on the road a lot.
On January 28th, the new Bavarian Minister of Health visited the vaccination center in Memmingen, on January 29th he visited the corona test station at the border crossing in Waldmünchen and one day later he started the corona vaccination campaign with nursing staff, motto: "I roll up my sleeves".
The CSU politician presents himself as a staunch supporter of the vaccine strategy: In the area of care in particular, it is crucial that “as many people as possible immunize themselves in order to protect the particularly endangered groups in our society and themselves,” he said Minister.
He himself will be vaccinated immediately when it is his turn.
That sounds like science, reason and trust in medicine.
But Bavaria's top health protector in particular has a reputation for adhering to dubious healing methods.
Klaus Holetschek (CSU), Minister of Health of Bavaria
Source: dpa
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While still as State Secretary, in October 2020 he advocated the establishment of a new chair for “Integrative Medicine” and set up a corresponding department in the ministry.
The aim is to specifically research methods such as anthroposophic medicine, acupuncture and homeopathy.
He sees homeopathy in particular, an application that has not proven its effectiveness for more than 200 years, in a mild light.
“The fact is, people use it,” he told the Munich-based “Merkur” last October.
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He himself, he told WELT on request, was critical of homeopathy “in many points”.
“But what we need are studies at the highest scientific level with well-founded and reliable methodology,” says Holetschek.
"Science has to give us arguments here so that we can lead this discussion."
But these studies exist, they have been around for years.
Practically no so-called "alternative" healing method can claim proof of effectiveness as researched in clinical tests of "evidence-based medicine" (EBM).
At most placebo effects can be identified.
With his understanding of "alternative medicine", Holetschek sends a second message in addition to his constant calls for vaccinations, which contradicts his vaccine campaign.
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Because homeopathy followers are disproportionately often critical of vaccinations.
This emerges from the drug report 2019 published by the Barmer Ersatzkasse.
After that, the probability of being vaccinated was significantly lower if the parents or the child took part in a homeopathy contract with the health insurance company.
In a survey of homeopaths, which was evaluated in an article in the journal “Classic Homeopathy” in 2012, only 32 percent of those questioned stated that they fully adhere to the vaccination recommendations of the Robert Koch Institute.
Half of them weighed up the vaccination and the time of vaccination themselves.
In contrast, 80 percent of the doctors who did not work homeopathically adhered to the recommendations.
Critics of homeopathy therefore attack Holetschek sharply.
"Those who sow homeopathy will reap vaccination fatigue," warns the Weilheim ENT doctor Christian Lübbers.
The doctor is involved in the Information Network Homeopathy (INH) initiative, which is committed to providing information about the controversial method.
In times of a global pandemic, this is a "devastating sign", Lübbers told WELT.
"I expect science and not populism from a health minister."
The INH chairwoman Jutta Hübner, professor of medicine from Jena, also has “a bad gut feeling” when a “homeopathic friend becomes the health minister”.
Oncologist Jutta Huebner finds it amazing "how well homeopathy advocates get into influential positions"
Source: Image: UKJ / Schroll
From a scientific point of view, Hübner deals with complementary medicine in cancer treatment, i.e. methods that can be used in addition to classic therapies such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy.
It is not about replacing established treatment methods, but about accompanying, soothing therapies.
She finds it "amazing how well homeopathic advocates get into positions of influence".
Holetschek does not challenge this criticism.
He himself was mayor of a Kneipp health resort for twelve years and for many years also President of the Kneipp Association and Chairman of the Bavarian Spa Association.
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"The classic natural healing methods such as Kneipp therapy or local remedies are therefore very close to my heart," he says to WELT.
He did not answer detailed questions about homeopathy.
Homeopathic medicines, which are usually diluted in such a way that no molecule of the original substance is left, must be approved by the Federal Institute for Medicinal Products and Medical Products (Bfarm).
However, the institute grants globule manufacturers a discount due to a special law: In contrast to other drugs, the authorities do not require any proof of efficacy for homeopathic preparations, only a certificate of harmlessness.
"Scientific pluralism is a dangerous and nonsensical term"
Medicine does not have to be able to heal, but it must not do harm.
This is what the legislature wanted in 1976 - and invented the term “scientific pluralism” for the coexistence of homeopathy and classical medicine.
For homeopathic critic Lübbers this is a "scandal" because it is measured with two different standards.
“Scientific pluralism is a dangerous and nonsensical term because there is only one science.
This is how you build a bridge to unscientific, irrational thinking, ”says Lübbers.
Opposition to vaccination and pseudomedicine have always stood together against scientific medicine.
"In the Corona times, they found each other very real in this intersection," says Lübbers.
ENT doctor Christian Lübbers
Source: Nora Cordova Photography
His INH colleague Huebner agrees.
"Homeopathy is dangerous because it can be a gateway for irrational thinking," she tells WELT.
Those who believe in inexplicable healing powers are often also of the conviction that vaccination is harmful, ”says the medical professor.
Despite the Enlightenment, the popularity of homeopathy in Germany remains unbroken.
The relevant associations proudly advertise that 60 percent of Germans have had experience with homeopathic remedies.
In 1974 the proportion was only 24 percent.
Every year Germans buy sugar globules and homeopathic drops for more than 500 million euros.
However, the INH refers to a survey by the Allensbach Institute on homeopathy, from which it emerges that only 17 percent of those questioned understood what the method was all about.
Three quarters of the interviewees said that homeopathy is a natural remedy - which is not true - or that it is made from plants or herbs.
But why do so many people believe in it?
The friends of "alternative medicine" have a strong ally at their side in language.
Terms such as "natural medicine" suggest that there are also "gentle" and "natural" means or methods to cure diseases.
The word “nature” resonates with the naive, anti-modern image of a supposedly caring and philanthropic “mother nature”, which in reality does not exist and has never existed.
Immutable concepts instead of progress
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In contrast, there are terms such as “conventional medicine” or “conventional medicine”, as Holetschek puts it.
At best, they promise that classical medicine treats strictly schematically, but ignores possible “alternatives” to the left and right of the path.
The focus should be on the “people”, as Holetschek believes.
But this is wrong.
The iron rule of effectiveness of the EBM serves the patient first and foremost, because it measures treatment methods according to their actual success and thus offers a realistic basis for decision-making for doctor and patient.
Scientific medicine is constantly improving, doubling its knowledge every five years, while “alternative” methods are mostly based on unchangeable concepts from their inventors.
Regardless of this, the term “alternative medicine” is more suitable for cabaret anyway - school meteorology or alternative mechanical engineering do not exist either.
At least not anymore.
80 years ago the Nazis tried to reinterpret supposedly “un-German” sciences.
What were meant were disciplines in which Jewish researchers worked, such as Albert Einstein.
The Austrian science journalist Christian Kreil summarized the development of the term in 2019 in an article for the "Standard".
Then in 1936 the author Philipp Lenards drafted an anti-Semitic counter-teaching to the modern concepts of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics in the book “Deutsche Physik”.
At this time, the Nazis also poisoned the word conventional medicine by using the adjective "Jewry" in front of it.
Hero of "Aryan" medicine at that time: Samuel Hahnemann, inventor of homeopathy.
And even then, the brown zeitgeist advocated reconciling “conventional medicine” with “alternative medicine”.
The “healing knowledge of alternative practitioners and the healing knowledge of orthodox doctors” should enter into a “new synthesis”, demanded the doctor Erwin Liek, an ardent supporter of euthanasia and editor of the medical journal “Hippokrates”.
Liek wanted to develop a “completely new, purely German healing art”.
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Has this kind of anti-science and ignorance of facts persisted for decades?
In any case, Klaus Holetschek drafted a very similar goal on October 21, 2020.
While still as State Secretary in the Ministry of Health, he said: "The future lies in the meaningful interaction of conventional and natural medicine therapy with integrative medicine."
Researcher Hübner is no longer upset about such wedding wishes.
She just wonders why there is no mention of actually effective herbal supplements.
Because there are healing methods that actually get by without chemistry.
"Phytotherapy often works well, but it doesn't have such a large lobby as homeopathy," says the expert on complementary medicine.
"So it happens that we argue and discuss the ineffective Hahnemann method while hardly anyone advocates the medicinal plants that have been tested for their effectiveness."