Roots of vaccination skepticism: wholemeal bread and globules

The disputes between supporters of the corona policy and opponents of vaccination are becoming more acute from week to week.

In Freiburg, 6,000 opponents of vaccination recently demonstrated that their march route should first lead past the university hospital, one of the clinics in Germany whose doctors and nurses have been fighting for the lives of corona patients every day since the beginning of the pandemic due to the high number of patients.

Many employees at the clinic were outraged.

The example shows how great the rejection of the pandemic policy and the vaccination campaign is now.

There are many reasons for the burgeoning of protest and resistance: the length of the pandemic, overly optimistic promises by politicians, increasing economic and psychological stress on people.

But in the discussion about vaccination and the introduction of a general obligation to vaccinate, a widespread phenomenon becomes apparent: mistrust of knowledge-based medicine and the pharmaceutical industry has been deeply rooted in the population for decades.

Google knowledge and “gentle medicine” 

For many, even before the pandemic, it was often a matter of course to first resort to herbal or homeopathic remedies for illnesses, to distrust doctors and to expect more from Google knowledge and “gentle medicine” than from a specialist.

According to surveys, only a quarter of Germans trust conventional medicine without reservation.

The love for globules and wholemeal bread is trendy.

The manufacturers make a three-digit million turnover with homeopathic medicines every year.

In purely quantitative terms, social media and the Internet have led to an oversupply of information about diseases and also to the rapid spread of dangerous false information.

Every family doctor fights daily against advice from “Dr.

Google".

Of course, there are also good reasons for the increased skepticism about high-performance medicine: the economic pressure in the clinics, highly complex forms of therapy, the gruff tone of the sometimes overwhelmed clinic staff or the mechanization of medicine.

The fact that some people, even during the pandemic, now want to heal a corona infection with homeopathic remedies and think that it is better to "sweat out" an infection, that expensive sugar globules are taken with the slogan "It doesn't help, but it doesn't hurt either". old and new political reasons.

For decades, almost all parties have avoided a clear debate with the followers of anthroposophy, arguing that this form of medicine should be promoted even more, because otherwise people would turn to the faith healers.

Fatal mistakes were made: Since 1976, homeopathic preparations have been allowed to be sold in pharmacies, the effectiveness of which has not been proven with the same scientific standards as apply to medicines from conventional pharmaceutical manufacturers.

In the wake of the Contergan crisis, politicians from the SPD, CDU and FDP allowed themselves to be blinded by the lobbyists of anthroposophists when the drug law was amended at the time, they agreed to a "pluralism of methods", so that stricter criteria apply to the proof of effectiveness of allopathic drugs than for homeopathic.

There is still no state examination for non-medical practitioners, and physiotherapists earn less than they do.

Before the pandemic, there were arguments within the Green Party, which has probably been closest to the anthroposophical movement since it was founded, as to why the scientific principle was being overridden in this area in favor of a confused worldview.

After all.

In the pandemic and in the vaccination debate, the old betrayal of science-based medicine is taking revenge.

It would also not be wrong to occasionally recall the historically problematic sides of anthroposophy: the word "orthodox medicine", as a synonym for soulless doctoring, was used by the National Socialists to agitate against the alleged system of "Jewish-Marxist" doctors.

Former Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) did not want to change the fact that some health insurance companies pay for homeopathic medicines: "It's okay the way it is." Now the doctor and social democrat Karl Lauterbach is in the ministry.

He knows better and could finally correct the system error.

Especially since some universities with chairs for science-based complementary medicine have long been a good way to help and heal with herbal remedies.