4 ms·

I hate these cynic comments. There are always people involved that knew about his situation lied to him, took his money for fake cures and fake diagnosis. Every

by nisa 6y ago

I hate these cynic comments. There are always people involved that knew about his situation lied to him, took his money for fake cures and fake diagnosis. Every one of them should face charges and be forbidden to see patients. This quack bullshit is insanely huge here in Germany and while it's true that in the end it's up to the patient to make the call, most of these quacks build up a relationship and gain trust and then sell their bogus cure with a huge margin. I had a roommate in her 20ies spending 5000+ euros because one of them told her she had heavy metal poisoning - I told her to see a regular doctor and she likely couldn't talk to me if that would be the case (she was fine, just gullible). Fuck everyone that does this. These are plain criminals in my view. There are tons of problem with the medical system and pharma biz, I'm not cheering for them but the alternative is often way worse and outright dangerous for a lot of people.

stainforth 6y ago
It was a revelation to me to hear also about homeopathy being followed in Germany. Forgive the generalization, and perhaps the usual mistake of stereotyping, but I thought Germans prided themselves on logic and efficiency. Are there reasons or demographic aspects to this buy-in?
- luckylion 6y ago
  I don't know about reasons, but I don't think it's a "the people are stupid" thing. My private insurance covers homeopathy, the public ones do not. I asked them to just drop that and save me 10 bucks, but they wouldn't and said they don't claim it works, but many of their members do like it, and those were mostly civil servants, lawyers, journalists etc. A friend of mine in medicine had a different perspective on it, his stance is basically that as long as they redirect the actual cases to the actual doctors, homeopathy is fine. It keeps the people who really just want somebody to talk to out of the doctor's offices and they will find help there, because the real doctor doesn't have time to do psycho-therapy light with them. At least from personal experience (my mother believes in it as well), it works. She knows very well what problems call for a doctor and what are okay to try homeopathy on.
  - julienfr112 6y ago
    Exactly the same with my mother. I could not help but to badmouth homeopathy with her. But thinking about it, I regret having done that.
- nisa 6y ago
  I can only give you my take on it and I might be quite a bit off with it but here we go: It's good buisness and that's why it's popular. In germany (at least in the west, in the GDR no such thing existed) there is a special job below a physician: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heilpraktiker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heilpraktiker These are hugely popular, you can become one pretty fast with just taking a test (they basically test that you are able to know when to call the real doctor) and all of them I've known make their money with quack cures. Pharmacies also making good money selling and advertising that stuff because of higher margins. Also real physicans have very tight budget limits since a few years back - if you have a problem that's not a broken leg the physican can't get money for talking with you - or it's something like 20€/3months without further diagnosis. So people - especially middle aged, rather high educated (not scientists but usally buerocrats, teachers, etc.pp) are very prone to this. Also the anti-vaccination movement is i.e. popular not in the poor parts in Berlin but instead where the well educated, good earning people are living. Take the rise of the internet where you can read up almost everything and convince yourself that you have superiour knowledge and probably a healthy dose of skepticism against anything "non natural" whatever that means... But there are real economic incentives that make this popular and even major parties are in support of this (Green pary for example). There is a movement to fix the payment of doctors and reform the medical system to better accomendate for the patients and forbid this insanity but it works well enough as it keeps patients aways from physican offices. But the quack theory spreads and not everyone recognises their own limits and delegates patients to real physicans. It's something that should be fixed but it's working well enough for everyone involved that it's seen as the lesser evil. As you can imagine I think it's a huge mistake but voices like mine are really a minitory.
  - stainforth 6y ago
    Thank you for the insight!
luckylion 6y ago
> There are always people involved that knew about his situation lied to him, took his money for fake cures and fake diagnosis. Probably, but I'm not at all sure how many. People believe in the weirdest things, and some make a business out of it not to exploit the gullible, but because they actually believe in it as well. When I talked to Feng Shui consultants I never got the faintest hint of them suppressing laughter and about to burst out what a great gig it is and how stupid the clients are. I see no reason why that shouldn't be similar in the "alternative medicine" field. There are certainly some that exploit it, but I'm absolutely not sure that they are the majority or even a sizable minority. People believe in the weirdest things.
- vmh1928 6y ago
  Enrolling others in a belief system is one way of confirming to the "enroller" the validity of their belief. People want other people to agree with them. That's the basis of the fable of The Emperor's New Clothes. The new clothes sure look nice, don't they. Why yes they do, excellent look for his majesty.

by nisa 6y ago

stainforth 6y ago

It was a revelation to me to hear also about homeopathy being followed in Germany. Forgive the generalization, and perhaps the usual mistake of stereotyping, but I thought Germans prided themselves on logic and efficiency. Are there reasons or demographic aspects to this buy-in?

luckylion 6y ago
I don't know about reasons, but I don't think it's a "the people are stupid" thing. My private insurance covers homeopathy, the public ones do not. I asked them to just drop that and save me 10 bucks, but they wouldn't and said they don't claim it works, but many of their members do like it, and those were mostly civil servants, lawyers, journalists etc. A friend of mine in medicine had a different perspective on it, his stance is basically that as long as they redirect the actual cases to the actual doctors, homeopathy is fine. It keeps the people who really just want somebody to talk to out of the doctor's offices and they will find help there, because the real doctor doesn't have time to do psycho-therapy light with them. At least from personal experience (my mother believes in it as well), it works. She knows very well what problems call for a doctor and what are okay to try homeopathy on.
- julienfr112 6y ago
  Exactly the same with my mother. I could not help but to badmouth homeopathy with her. But thinking about it, I regret having done that.
nisa 6y ago
I can only give you my take on it and I might be quite a bit off with it but here we go: It's good buisness and that's why it's popular. In germany (at least in the west, in the GDR no such thing existed) there is a special job below a physician: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heilpraktiker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heilpraktiker These are hugely popular, you can become one pretty fast with just taking a test (they basically test that you are able to know when to call the real doctor) and all of them I've known make their money with quack cures. Pharmacies also making good money selling and advertising that stuff because of higher margins. Also real physicans have very tight budget limits since a few years back - if you have a problem that's not a broken leg the physican can't get money for talking with you - or it's something like 20€/3months without further diagnosis. So people - especially middle aged, rather high educated (not scientists but usally buerocrats, teachers, etc.pp) are very prone to this. Also the anti-vaccination movement is i.e. popular not in the poor parts in Berlin but instead where the well educated, good earning people are living. Take the rise of the internet where you can read up almost everything and convince yourself that you have superiour knowledge and probably a healthy dose of skepticism against anything "non natural" whatever that means... But there are real economic incentives that make this popular and even major parties are in support of this (Green pary for example). There is a movement to fix the payment of doctors and reform the medical system to better accomendate for the patients and forbid this insanity but it works well enough as it keeps patients aways from physican offices. But the quack theory spreads and not everyone recognises their own limits and delegates patients to real physicans. It's something that should be fixed but it's working well enough for everyone involved that it's seen as the lesser evil. As you can imagine I think it's a huge mistake but voices like mine are really a minitory.
- stainforth 6y ago
  Thank you for the insight!

luckylion 6y ago

> There are always people involved that knew about his situation lied to him, took his money for fake cures and fake diagnosis. Probably, but I'm not at all sure how many. People believe in the weirdest things, and some make a business out of it not to exploit the gullible, but because they actually believe in it as well. When I talked to Feng Shui consultants I never got the faintest hint of them suppressing laughter and about to burst out what a great gig it is and how stupid the clients are. I see no reason why that shouldn't be similar in the "alternative medicine" field. There are certainly some that exploit it, but I'm absolutely not sure that they are the majority or even a sizable minority. People believe in the weirdest things.

vmh1928 6y ago
Enrolling others in a belief system is one way of confirming to the "enroller" the validity of their belief. People want other people to agree with them. That's the basis of the fable of The Emperor's New Clothes. The new clothes sure look nice, don't they. Why yes they do, excellent look for his majesty.