The land wedded to quack medicine

Der Standard

(Austria) Are the French finally going to start listening to science? asked Klaus Taschwer. Their government is prodding them in that direction. French Health Minister Agnès Buzyn, who is a doctor, has decreed that government health insurance will no longer pay part of the cost of homeopathic remedies. Homeopathy uses tiny amounts of a plant or mineral with the aim of stimulating a patient’s natural immune responses. Buzyn has rightly concluded that this so-called alternative medicine is not worth subsidizing, because study after study has shown that homeopathic pills are no better than a placebo. “Which is to say, no good at all.” Yet the French consume these hocus-pocus potions in vast quantities—their government reimbursed them $143 million for homeopathic treatments last year. During the 18th century, France was “the center of European enlightenment and reason.” Today, its people “embrace ignorance,” at least in health matters. One in three French people believes vaccines are dangerous, the highest rate of such skepticism in the world. Perhaps the country needs to undergo “a kind of Enlightenment 2.0 in the matter of scientific evidence.” In the meantime, those patients who are furious that they will soon have to pay more out of pocket for their homeopathic pills can take comfort in one scientific teaching: “Placebos have been shown to work better the more they cost.”