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Homeopathy and natural remedies are about to be put to the test by the
German research ministry (the BMFT) in a project designed to settle the
issue of which treatments work and which are a waste of time and the government’s
money.

Germans use large quantites of homeopathic and natural medicines. Of
126 000 medicines on the market, 90 000 are classified as natural medicines.
A survey of family doctors in 1986 revealed that 34 per cent regularly prescribe
natural remedies.

The project, costing 10 million marks ( £4 million), will concentrate
on homeopathy, herbal medicines and natural healing methods; acupuncture
used to alleviate migraines and chronic pain; and ‘Kneipp’ baths and showers,
which are supposed to increase the body’s resistance to disease.

‘We did an inventory of the types of natural medicines which are most
frequently used in Germany,’ says Annelise Bohn of the BMFT. Now research
groups around the country must compete for funds to investigate the most
common treatments.

‘For some medicines, the usual clinical trials carried out on conventional
medicines would provide us with what we need to know. Then we can simply
compare results,’ says Bernd Rosslenbroich, who helped to draw up the inventory.
‘But some medicines and therapies work only on certain patients. Those could
require single case studies, or new research designs,’ he says. ‘We need
to discover if there are certain types of patient where specific methods
are more effective.’

The Robert Bosch Foundation has already begun to look at homeopathic
treatments for headaches in a project at the University of Freiburg. ‘We’re
doing the usual double – blind tests with placebos,’ says Harald Walac,
who is working on the study. ‘The difference is that instead of testing
a single drug, we’re testing different homeopathic preparations, because
each therapy is individually mixed for a specific patient.’ The team hopes
to win funding from the BMFT to continue its work.

The programme could also produce new techniques for evaluating the effectiveness
of conventional medical practices, says Rosslenbroich. ‘Take radiation therapy,
for example. Some patients are far more sensitive to radiation therapy,
others far less. It would be better if we had some way of knowing that beforehand.’

The BMFT set up the project in response to parliament’s call for an
investigation of homeopathic medicines and other natural healing methods
in 1990. The findings will help health insurance companies to decide which
treatments they should pay for.

With the cost of reunification stretching its budget, the German government
is concerned about the soaring costs of health care. ‘If a natural method
or medication is effective then the insurance company should pay for it,
but if it’s not or there’s a better treatment, then the money would be better
spent elsewhere,’ says Bohn.