Quite a few people in the Southwest take pellets when they are sick. But hardly anything is as controversial as homeopathy. Now the head of the green governing party is getting involved.
Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) – The Greens state chairwoman Lena Schwelling considers the ongoing dispute over homeopathy to be completely exaggerated and wants to give people freedom of choice. Like Minister of Health Manne Lucha (Greens), she believes that naturopathy and homeopathy are important issues for many people in the country. “There is freedom of choice in this country for doctors and therapies. And if people want to make that choice, then I think they have to be allowed to do so.” Further training in homeopathy for doctors should also remain.
The 30-year-old Schwelling spoke out against removing homeopathy from the catalog of services provided by statutory health insurance companies, as demanded by the FDP, for example. She couldn’t understand why the costs were being used as an argument. “We’re talking about 0.003 percent of the total cost of statutory health insurance that goes into homeopathic medicines and treatments.”
That’s not worth mentioning. “If you were to see it as a homeopathic drug, it would also be at the detection limit, it’s so little money. It’s so diluted and so little in this overall budget that it’s not worth arguing about.” Schwelling went on to say: “That’s why I’m very surprised at what kind of crusade some people are taking against the subject of homeopathy.”
A dispute has recently been smoldering in the south-west about further training in homeopathy. The representative assembly of the Baden-Württemberg State Medical Association decided in July to remove the additional designation homeopathy from the further training regulations. Lucha’s ministry has legal oversight of the medical association and must review the amendment to the statute. However, the minister has already stated that he considers the deletion to be wrong.
Schwelling said it was a “normal process” for the ministry to examine what the medical association had proposed. It is quite clear: “Further training in homeopathy is additional training and does not replace medical studies. Of course, homeopathic doctors also prescribe antibiotics if it is indicated.” The party leader added: “An important reason why homeopathy should remain in the canon is that you then have the established control mechanisms, for example in further training.”
Opponents of homeopathy keep arguing that there is no scientific proof of the effectiveness of globules, i.e. homeopathic globules. The independent patient advice service Germany recently explained that homeopathic remedies cost the healthcare system money and could lead to people forgoing effective treatments or losing confidence in scientifically based medicine. Lucha, on the other hand, had declared that he believed in the effectiveness of homeopathy.
