Debunk-Tuesday – Deadly German Medicine
Every Tuesday I am going to address one specific myth, urban legend, conspiracy theory or piece of pseudo-science. This time it’s (mostly) about cancer. Again. Duh. But from a different approach. We take a closer look at the so-called German New Medicine.
Death is the Cure
Every week I’m living in constant fear that I will not be able to come up with an interesting topic for my Tuesday series (Curse you, regular posting behaviour!), but lucky me, my social milieu never fails to disappoint me.
And so, it happened just a few days ago, me sitting with a friend in a bar discussing health, medicine and frauds. At some point he explained to me something, which he called Hamerian Medicine - a term, with which I was not familiar.
He said, there was this guy, Hamer, who was able to show connections in the brain to certain cancer occurrences and offered proper treatment. I was…sceptical, at least.
Since I’m digging weekly into the abyss of pseudo-science I did, what every decent scientist does these days: I asked Google.
I searched for the Hamer guy and suddenly I was on fire. Not literally, but you know what I mean.
Suddenly I recognized the name Google displayed me: Geerd Ryke Hamer(1).
Wait, wait, wait…there was something shady about this guy. I remembered, I read something about him years ago. And there it was: he invented something called the German New Medicine(2).
With about 140 confirmed victims (some of the cases are explained more detailed here) (3), it can easily be described as one of the deadliest “alternative cancer therapies” there is. But not so much by the “treatment” it offers but because it prevents cancer patients from getting real help and providing a false sense of hope.
Let’s dig into the details.
It’s your own fault, stupid!
Every time you are trying to find solid research on something, you usually use academic databases to search for a given topic. And most of the times you find something in which you can dig into – but not always. This is one of these cases.
The claims of Hamer and his followers are so horrendously wrong, that the academic world didn’t even bother to try disproving them. Therefore, I cannot provide you the usual sources like scientific studies and journals, but at least present the ideas of the German New Medicine - which should, hopefully, be enough to convince you why it’s incredibly dangerous.
Five Biological laws
According to Hamer and his followers, there are in fact nothing like diseases but every bad health condition is basically an unsolved inner conflict of mind and body. Yeah…sure.
This idea emerges into five biological laws, which are used to explain and treat every illness there is. So, let’s check them out(4).
Iron Rule
Imagine you experience a very traumatic event – like the loss of a close friend or something similar. According to Hamer’s ideas, these shocking experiences are going to be represented inside you brain, which can be shown using CT scans (he calls them Hamer foci). He claims, there is some kind of connection between these foci and the location of the disease inside your body. Whatever this connection may be.Two phased nature of disease
Life is binary. There are people who aren’t idiots. And like life, it’s the same with diseases. Some of these are reflections of an unsolved, inner conflict. Hamer calls them “cold diseases” (e.g. sleep disorders or cold skin, etc.). But if you manage to resolve the conflict, you are evolving into the next stage (level-up, yay): you are now able to get “warm diseases” (e.g. infections or allergic reactions) and only if you are truly able to resolve your inner problems, you will be cured. If not, you are doomed for eternity and going to die a painful death. Take this, sucker.Ontogenetic system of disease
Your brain controlls everything. If you catch some kind of illness – blame the brain! Forget genetics, bacteria, viruses, etc. – your brain is responsible for every suffering mankind ever endured. Screw you, brain!
Now I understand, why the dumb people in my life never die by severe diseases – they just lack the brains!Ontogenetic system of microbes
Microbes? Wait, what? Didn’t I just tell you, these tiny guys have nothing to do with diseases? Well, yes and no. Hamer is here to enlighten us, once again. Microbes have no impact in creating a disease, but in healing it – all neatly controlled by our brain, of course. Phew. Lucky us. That’s why it’s incredibly detrimental to fight against microbes using evil school medicine, since it disturbs the natural healing process. The more you know!Quintessence
The two phases, which I described above are in fact even better than they may appear. They are “special meaningful programs of nature”, which were created as an important part of evolution, so we were handed the tools do deal with severe crisis and distress. The dumb religious folks thought, diseases are all God’s plan – but the truth is, they are “meaningful programs of nature”. Wake up, sheeple!
Now you know what this is all about. If you die from cancer (or any other disease) it’s your own fault, since you weren’t able to resolve your inner conflicts. Or you didn’t commit enough to the treatment of the German New Medicine. This can lead to very tragic events like the unnecessary deaths of patients with treatable conditions (see the link above). To give you an example, we can just take a closer look at the case of Olivia Pilhar. The girl was six years old when she was diagnosed with a Wilm’s tumour(5) in 1995.
It’s a malignancy which occurs more often in children but is very well treatable and the outcome is often quite positively. IF it is treated properly.
Alternatively, one could go to a quack like Hamer and refrain from conventional therapy. As predicted, the tumour grew quite heavily, reducing the possibility of Olivia’s survival tremendously. After quite some time, while her parents evaded the Austrian authorities, she was finally able to receive proper treatment (against the wishes of her parents) and survived in the end – suffered far more pain and trauma in comparison to an early treatment.
It should be quite obvious now, why Hamer’s license to practice medicine was revoked in 1986. He’s nothing but a dangerous quack, who is responsible for several deaths. Oh, wait, there is at least some satisfaction: he died in July 2017. But sadly, his ideas still live on.
Medicine is Not a Conspiracy
I am, of course, not the first one to discuss Hamer’s crazy ideas. In an entertaining to read rant(6) versus this type of quackery, David Gorski wrote about this whole thing several years ago. I highly recommend checking it out as well.
The whole idea of German New Medicine contradicts everything we know so far about cancer and the human body in general. Cancer and its treatment is very, very complicated(7).
It comes to no surprise, that like most alternative nutjobs Ryke Geerd Hamer was an open Anti-Semite as well. He wrote several letters claiming the existence of a big Jewish conspiracy, which already cured cancer for 99% of the Jews using his German New Medicine(8)(9).
This is probably another indication whether you should trust your doctor or not: as soon as he starts muttering about some kind of evil conspiracy he alone is able to fight and reveal – you better start to run.
Feel always free to discuss my ideas and share your own thoughts about the things I’m writing about. Nobody is omniscient and if we all walk away a bit smarter than before, we’ll have achieved a lot.
Thanks for reading and stay sceptical.
Make sure, to check out #steemstem for more science related content.
References
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryke_Geerd_Hamer
(2) https://www.psiram.com/en/index.php/Germanic_New_Medicine
(3) https://www.psiram.com/en/index.php/Victims_of_New_Medicine
(4) http://learninggnm.com/SBS/documents/gnm_paradigm_opening_page.html
(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilms%27_tumor
(6) https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-iron-rule-of-cancer-the-new-german-medicine-and-cancer-quackery/
(7) https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-cancer-tragedy-in-the-making/
(8) https://web.archive.org/web/20110815053742/http://dr-rykegeerdhamer.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=362&Itemid=76
(9) https://web.archive.org/web/20110815053200/http://dr-rykegeerdhamer.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=361&Itemid=76
Debunk-Tuesday
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That is a good one. Psychology is enough to cure everything, in short. Of course I have nothing against psychology, but psychology does not cure every single illness...
pfff...
Don't let @abigail-dantes hear that :P
I would argue, depending on the medical issue, in favor of a combination of psychological and (non)invasive treatment. There are some indications, that a healthy mindset can help to increase the regeneration process. I'm probably going to do a post about this in the future as well.
As I said to @abigail-dantesm, I miswrote my original thought. I of course agree with her comment and there are illness that can be cured by psychology, depression being the first one to be thought off. Sorry about this.
Well, there you go Ego ... I agree with you here! 😃
Hey @lemouth, that is a bit of a sweeping statement over there 😊
Psychological treatments do cure mental illnesses, the positive outcome of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in particular, is undisputed in many, many areas. Namely, phobias, OCD and panic disorders. Nowadays this psychological approach is also yielding positive outcomes in areas such as personality-disorders! Of course, it does not work for everybody. But, in these cases clients normally seek other approaches; eg. humanistic, existential and psychotherapy (which, as of late is regaining its lost credibility). This is one of the beauties of psychology.
Plenty evidence shows that well-conducted CBT is better than TAU and placebo. Further, in treatments that compare the outcome of CBT with that of ADMs demonstrate that patients who received psychological treatment (CT or CBT) show much more sustainable, long-term recovery. This is partially because the methods used to address one psychological illness - through CBT - can be applied to possible future issues too. This is something that has been observed over and over again.
I hope this makes you rethink your beliefs about the limitations of psychology regarding the cure of illnesses. 😘
Actually, I miswrote what I thought. I meant, "every single illness". I promise. Sorry about that!
I edited my comment ^^
😊
you don't believe me :'(
😂😂😂😂
I DO!!! I DO!! Oh my God, I am laughing so hard right now.
😂😂
Pfewww then ;)
That's some frustrating pseudoscience. Its doubly annoying when parts of the crazy theories are true (eg. good mental health and the microbiome help prevent disease) making it harder to see the bullshit.
Here in Mexico, we have bogus remedies too, people find more attractive to used 'alternative medicine' to cure illness when they only really need to take real medicine.
And it's not like these substances don't cure illness is that they can even be harmful to consume them. Thanks for bringing awareness about this into the platform, keep steemiting!
The main problem with these quacks is, they promise easy solution when there is no such thing - but people tend to look for exactly that.
Indeed it's like when people try to use the 'easiest', 'fastest' methods to lose weight like 'diet pills' instead of doing it like it actually works (diet and exercise). You are right and people shouldn't look for the easy way out, but I also think this kind of practices have to be regulated and AT LEAST the government should step up and obligate them to put warnings on the bottles saying that it hasn't been proven to work or that they do not posses any real medication.
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Sounds like some kind of Hegelianism!
Yup, blaming the victim. It's not external factors that are responsible, but you yourself. I believe that tendency to blame the sick person is alive and kicking to this day, but it takes more covered forms now, like positive thinking or whatnot.