[HN Gopher] Could Germany's obsession with homeopathy explain th...
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       Could Germany's obsession with homeopathy explain the low
       vaccination rate?
        
       Author : mrzool
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2022-01-05 20:27 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.exberliner.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.exberliner.com)
        
       | jelliclesfarm wrote:
       | I took homeopathic Byronia Alba for three weeks as a loading dose
       | before the vaccines were available. I also formulated my own
       | constitutional homeopathic remedy 12 years ago from a specific
       | snake venom after trying various other snake remedies.
       | 
       | I have used it on my animals too. Not just pets like cats and
       | dogs but also horses. I have saved dozens of animals while the
       | vets insisted that euthanasia was the only option. In India,
       | without resources while volunteering at an animal shelter, I
       | learnt it to help street animals and feral cats. I mix and match
       | homeopathic and allopathic modalities all the time.
       | 
       | I am not willing to cut off my nose to spite my face in the name
       | of 'scientific thinking'. So I don't reject any healing modality
       | that works.
       | 
       | There is literally no science that proves homeopathy doesn't
       | work. A lot of anti alt medicine rants is just as unscientific as
       | medicinal quackery(this also exists). YMMV.
       | 
       | I was also willing to participate in the mass experimentation of
       | covid vaccines even though I didn't know much about it..none of
       | us did..we all acted on the basis of faith. I was under no
       | illusion about the alleged effectiveness of the vaccines. It was
       | a crapshoot. It is the same attitude that I had when I first
       | adopted homeopathy. In balance, I have had more success with
       | homeopathy than with allopathic (or even herbal/Ayurvedic)
       | modalities and I tend to favour homeopathy over all else.
       | 
       | Also: let's not forget that it's cheap and somewhat open source.
       | Anyone with time and effort can learn it. So it's not a profit
       | gusher. If anything, it diverts profits from Big Pharma. I adore
       | Big Pharma, but I am not going to shell out thousands of dollars
       | and hours of my life in waiting rooms for a headache or flu or a
       | broken arm or asthma or migraines if I can figure it out myself.
       | I can. Many can't. I am glad that they have other options. Just
       | don't want others to diss mine. Especially by those who don't
       | want to educate themselves about other healing modalities and
       | would simply parrot others in the name of 'science'.
       | 
       | I have literally never met a scientist who disagrees at once with
       | someone who carries a different point of view. Scientific
       | temperament is one that is ever searching. I have known
       | intelligent, thoughtful and highly educated scholars who would at
       | the most crinkle their foreheads with not so much as a smirk
       | ..and they'd very politely ask for reasons why..this is how I
       | filter scientists from non scientists. Not by the degree they
       | earn from books and parroting lecturing professors. The trademark
       | of science is curiosity and a questioning attitude. When that
       | dies, science dies. IMO..even within my relatively short
       | lifetime..scientific temperament has dimmed considerably and I
       | expect it to die soon..with only the gatekeepers managing the
       | flow and direction of new discoveries and science.
       | 
       | Edited to add: that is an idiotic article. Equating homeopathy to
       | 'nazi medicine' and an anti Semitic motive is just bad
       | journalism. I find it repulsive that this author is published.
        
       | gumby wrote:
       | I found one sympathetic use of homeopathy. My mother in law had
       | cancer and had several years of treatment (really excellent
       | treatment in a variety of hospitals and clinics around Germany
       | over the years) but eventually they ran out of things that might
       | work and sent her home for good. I noticed that she was quite
       | diligent with her homeopathic medication, and as she became more
       | disabled, her kids and the Diakonie nurse continued this right up
       | to the end.
       | 
       | Why would they bother? Why would the insurance continue paying
       | for this (she certainly couldn't have afforded it)? I think they
       | did this because it gave her a sense of agency, and therefore
       | increased the quality of her life at the end. She was sent home
       | to die, but she remained a human being up to the end.
       | 
       | This radically changed my view of homeopathy, mainly because I
       | think it provided (IMHO) good value to her. Before that I
       | considered it an unmitigated scam.
       | 
       | However if this article's thesis is correct, it's worse than
       | merely a scam.
        
       | SigmundA wrote:
       | Ah Homeopathy its like vaccination but without the science:
       | 
       | "A popular homeopathic treatment for the flu is a 200C dilution
       | of duck liver, marketed under the name Oscillococcinum. As there
       | are only about 10^80 atoms in the entire observable universe, a
       | dilution of one molecule in the observable universe would be
       | about 40C. Oscillococcinum would thus require 10320 times more
       | atoms to simply have one molecule in the final substance."
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions
        
       | uniqueuid wrote:
       | Great question!
       | 
       | There certainly is a connection to homeopathy and the wider
       | context of alternative spiritual beliefs, some of which were
       | invented and/or have deep roots in Germany.
       | 
       | But there is a recent study (German only, sorry) [1] which
       | investigated precisely this hypothesis and came up with a more
       | nuanced view:
       | 
       | - There is a synergy between valuing opposition for opposition's
       | sake and alternative spiritual beliefs
       | 
       | - Those beliefs include fringe christian sects, radical
       | anthroposophic believers, oppositional well-off citizens and
       | traditional political opposition
       | 
       | So there is an amalgam of all of these, and they're currently
       | linked by a shared opposition against a perceived over-bearing
       | state.
       | 
       | [1] https://boell-
       | bw.de/sites/default/files/2021-11/Studie_Quell...
        
       | mrkramer wrote:
       | 71% vaccination rate is low?! How can you explain then low
       | vaccination rate of US? They have 62% fully vaccinated.
        
       | davidkunz wrote:
       | See also "Wer Globuli sat, wird Impfgegnerschaft ernten":
       | https://www.spektrum.de/kolumne/grams-sprechstunde-wer-globu...
       | (in German)
        
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       (page generated 2022-01-05 23:02 UTC)