#3021: Peter Hinderberger

Peter Hinderberger (M.D., Ph.D., DIHom) is a Baltimore-based “integrative” practitioner whose declared mission is to “promote optimal wellbeing by providing health care through an integrated approach, combining conventional and complementary therapies, which include Anthroposophic medicine, homeopathy, and salutogenesis.” Apparently, Hinderberger in particular targets cancer patients, whom he thinks that he and his arsenal of nonsense have something to offer. As he sees it, “[i]ntegrative medicine combines the best of Western and holistic medicine” (i.e. the best of real medicine with the ‘best’ of nonsense), but whereas “Western medicine aims to cure. Holistic medicine’s goal is to heal”, which is, given any reasonable definition, also the goal of real medicine, but Hinderberger needs some snappy formulations for marketing purposes – don’t think too much about what he is actually saying. And to “demonstrate the validity of both approaches”, Hinderberger points out that whereas (real) medicine can remove cancers, “statistics show that many cancers reoccur because ‘cure’ does not address the original disposition to cancer,” which of course is pure nonsense when it comes to why cancers reoccur. Hinderberger, however, offers patients recovering from cancer means to “detox and strengthen the functions of the organs as well as restore balance between body, soul and spirit using different modalities like anthroposophic medicine, homeopathy, nutrition, counseling, movement therapy, etc.”. Needless to say, fluffy bullshit will do nothing to actually prevent the reoccurrence of cancer, but it might provide patients with a (false) sense of empowerment, especially if, as often is the case, the cancer doesn’t reoccur. We’re sure Hinderberger’s got some nice customer reviews (after all, dissatisfied customers are often no longer around to express their side).

 

Though there are many people like Hinderberger around, we took note of him for being the MD of cancer survivor Ivelisse Page, who apparently credited the fact that her cancer (rather unsurprisingly) didn’t reoccur to some bullshit she’d gotten from Hinderberger (including “daily alternating injections of mistletoe and thymus, cimetidine [a real drug with possible anti-tumor effects], homeopathic remedies and additional supplements”) and subsequently, with her husband Jim, founded Believe Big, a nonprofit aimed to ‘educate’ people on “bridging the gap between conventional and complementary medicine for fighting cancer” and which tried to raise funds for mistletoe clinical trials – apparently Hinderberger’s repertoire includes a mistletoe extract that is “not approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA)” and which “falls under the category of homeopathy and is paid for out-of-pocket, at a cost of $100 to $150 per month, depending on the extract intensity and number of injections.” Page’s story is discussed here.

 

Diagnosis: Yet another one. Good grief.

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence