2024-02-09 17:46:22
As the Federal Constitutional Court announced on Friday, it did not accept complaints from three alternative practitioners who had been prohibited from taking blood for so-called autologous blood therapy. “The complainants did not submit documents that would allow us to determine exactly which treatment procedures they used in their respective practices and did not show the treatment methods in detail,” explains the court.
However, this is crucial. “The health risks associated with the treatment are particularly important when examining proportionality,” explains the Federal Constitutional Court. “These differ depending on the treatment method.” In addition, the alternative practitioners did not conclusively demonstrate any violation of fundamental rights. The fact that some courts had previously recognized some of the therapies as permissible “does not necessarily lead to the admissibility of all autologous blood treatments offered by alternative practitioners”.
Do exceptions apply to homeopathic medicines?
The question of whether the profession can use the therapies involves legal details. In 2019, the profession was banned from producing prescription medicines itself following fatal incidents as a result of a naturopath treating cancer patients with a dangerous substance. Human blood preparations that are intended to be used medicinally on humans require a prescription, although there is an exception for highly diluted homeopathic preparations.
However, the Transfusion Act stipulates that blood samples must be taken by a doctor or under medical supervision – this law also provides an exception for “homeopathic autologous blood products”. Last year, the Federal Administrative Court ruled that an autologous blood product can only be viewed as homeopathic if it was produced using homeopathic preparation methods that are described in an official pharmacopoeia.
“Just reinjected when shaken”
The representative of the federal interest at the Federal Administrative Court also argued, in agreement with the Federal Ministry of Health, that the term “homeopathic” should be understood accordingly. Alternative practitioners sometimes viewed their therapies as homeopathic even if they had added a homeopathic remedy to the blood taken or had subjected the blood to another supposedly homeopathic procedure – and criticized the judgment: According to the Association of Independent Alternative Practitioners, the Association of German Alternative Practitioners has the constitutional complaints as well supported the proceedings at the Federal Administrative Court and explained that its ruling ignored well-founded arguments. It seems to have been “obviously decided before the trial”.
In November, the Lower Saxony Higher Administrative Court also overturned a ruling by the Osnabrück Administrative Court and banned a naturopath from treating patients with their own blood, which was reinjected unchanged or “merely shaken”.
Proceedings pending at the Bavarian Constitutional Court
The Munich Administrative Court, however, had partially allowed alternative practitioners to use their own blood therapy. The government of Upper Bavaria had previously viewed it as forbidden – the alternative practitioners explained that they would lose around half of their sales as a result and sued against the government’s decisions. According to the administrative court, alternative practitioners are allowed to carry out therapies in which they take “whole blood” and inject it again unchanged or even after they have mixed it with non-prescription homeopathic medicines. However, they are prohibited from other autologous blood therapies, such as when ozone is added to the blood. The Bavarian Constitutional Court is currently dealing with these questions.
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The Association of German Alternative Practitioners and Naturopaths (BDHN) supported the lawsuits at the Munich Administrative Court. The therapeutic range of alternative practitioners has been restricted several times in recent years due to legal changes, explained its chairman Herbert Eger. “This cannot and must not be accepted in any way, as a further reduction in therapy procedures would severely limit the therapy options.” This could “impair the success of the therapy and, as a result, there could also be a significant reduction in the practice’s turnover.”
According to the Association of German Alternative Practitioners, autologous blood therapies are used for numerous diseases and could also be “quite helpful” for patients with weakened immune systems. But they are not established, on the contrary. “Scientific proof of the effectiveness of autologous blood therapy is missing,” writes the Techniker health insurance company. “There are no recognized studies on this therapeutic method.”
The profession of alternative practitioners is repeatedly criticized, for example because there is no obligation to undergo training.
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