Are globules and co. now threatened with the end?

Berlin Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach wants to review the financing of homeopathic treatments by statutory health insurance companies. “Although homeopathy is not significant in terms of the volume of expenditure, it has no place in a science-based health policy,” said the SPD politician to the “Spiegel”.

In fact, over the decades, a gigantic market has developed for drugs whose medical benefits have not been proven. In any case, the scientific consensus is that no effect can be proven for homeopathic treatments that goes beyond the placebo effects.

Substances that are highly diluted according to the principle of “potentiation” are referred to as “homeopathic”. Potentiation means that water is not simply added, for example, but serially diluted again and again by a factor of about ten or a hundred. If this happens often enough, there is ultimately little or nothing left of the original substance, which can be a plant extract, an element or an inorganic molecule.