It is the opponents of homeopathy who argue in terms of popular education

It's nice that there are still Greens who are cultivating traditions. The state leader of the Greens in Baden-Württemberg has criticized a "crusade against homeopathy". Homeopathic treatments should continue to be paid for by the health insurance companies, and homeopathic training courses should be offered by the medical associations.

Lena Schwelling ostensibly criticizes the FDP, which is not leading a "crusade" - the word fits the liberals, who have always been remote from religion, about as well as the dove of peace fits the Greens, who have meanwhile turned bellicose - against globules, but for the deletion of homeopathy from the list of services the cash register enters.

But the former Waldorf student probably also means her own party. At their party conference in 2020, the Greens decided on a basic program that states that health insurance companies should only pay for services “that are medically useful and justified and whose effectiveness has been scientifically proven”. Which is not the case with homeopathy.

The party congress broke with a tradition of the Greens, which were originally characterized by a fundamental skepticism about science, technology and so-called "conventional medicine". It is part of the dialectical irony of history that these ideas - see for example the vaccine skepticism - together with anti-Americanism and anti-authoritarianism can now be found more on the right side of the political spectrum, while the Greens have declared themselves to be the party of left-bourgeois reason - state-supporting, transatlantic, pragmatic – have advanced.

And even Schwelling does not argue with a defense of homeopathy, but rather in a very liberal way: “In this country there is freedom of choice for doctors and therapies. And if people want to make that choice, then you have to give them permission to do so.”

According to Schwelling, this freedom is bought with expenses that look almost homeopathic: "We are talking about about 0.003 percent of the total costs of the statutory health insurance companies." force luck.

Rather, it is the opponents of homeopathy who argue in terms of popular education. It is unacceptable for the state, insurance companies, doctors and pharmacies to encourage pre-scientific and esoteric thinking by recognizing homeopathy. Where this leads, some say, can be seen in the German 'lateral thinkers', those who hate masks and those who refuse to vaccinate.

But before the corona pandemic, vaccination skepticism was much more widespread in France, at 41 percent, than here, where at 10.5 percent it was below the world average of 12.5 percent. Studies during the pandemic show: Vaccination skepticism is far more pronounced in the countries of the former Eastern bloc, where the communists dismissed homeopathy as unscientific, than in the West, where "alternative medicine" was freely available.

In short: Schwelling is right. Globules have never harmed anyone. A religious war over homeopathy, on the other hand, does not help anyone. In view of the opioid crisis in the USA, we should be happy if many Germans believe that they can cure their ailments with harmless globules. Doctors who have a regular license and are doing additional homeopathic training can estimate when their patients need more than sugar water.