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Berlin

MEDICAL researchers in Germany are furious about a new law that seems to
grant alternative medical treatments the same scientific status as orthodox
medicine. They say that the law could force insurance companies to pay for
everything from ozone injections—claimed to combat infections—to the
application of magnetic fields to enhance wellbeing.

Until now, German law required a committee of medical specialists to evaluate
new treatments “according to the current state of scientific knowledge” and
decide whether insurance should cover those costs. The new law, however, calls
for an evaluation “according to the current state of scientific knowledge in
that particular form of therapy”. This means that each new alternative treatment
would be evaluated by specialists within the relevant branch of alternative
medicine, a process described as “peer recognition”.

“It’s a catastrophe,” says Franz Hofmann, director of the Institute for
Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Munich. The new law, he claims,
is an attack on scientific standards for assessing the efficacy of
treatments.

Gerd Glaeske, a medical expert with the insurance company Barmer
Ersatzkasse, says that the decision could mean that “if all the ozone therapists
agree that a particular kind of ozone therapy is useful, then it is”. If
government committees were to reject such treatments for insurance cover,
alternative therapists would now be able to challenge the decisions in
court.

The law will affect alternative therapies developed over the past 20 years,
rather than treatments such as homeopathy and acupuncture which are traditional
in Germany and routinely covered by the health insurance. The controversial
amendment was inserted into a massive health reform act at the last minute by
proponents of alternative therapy. It took most medical scientists by
surprise.

Advocates of alternative therapies say the law is necessary to promote
“pluralism” in the committees that decide on the validity of new medical
treatments.

“Of course it irritates those, like me, who say there ought to be some
evidence that these things work,” says Glaeske. But he accepts that alternative
therapies are popular with the German public. “No German government can afford
to cut them from the list of approved treatments.”