4 ms·

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, bu

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

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!