Status: 02/13/2021 7:41 a.m.
Flyers from the “Doctors for Enlightenment” keep popping up in Hamburg’s mailboxes. The initiative is one of the most stubborn corona deniers – it plays down the corona virus and warns against vaccinations.
“By protecting ourselves with this mask, we damage our immune system,” says the Hamburg doctor Walter Weber.
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The leaflets aggressively claim that the pandemic was an invention of governments and the media. The vaccination campaign would claim 80,000 lives. The founder and leader of the movement is the Hamburg doctor Walter Weber, who warns against protective masks, among other things: “You need a normal exchange with viruses and bacteria in order to have an immune system,” he said at the end of last year on the sidelines of a demonstration. “By protecting ourselves with this mask, we damage our immune system.”
The list of supporters of the “Doctors for Enlightenment”, which is no longer publicly accessible, contains several hundred supporters, including around a dozen doctors from Hamburg.
Medical Association sees no handle, prosecutor is investigating
The President of the Hamburg Medical Association, Pedram Emami, told the Hamburg Journal: “If someone expresses his opinion in a private setting – as insane as his opinion may be – then of course the chamber has no way of dealing with it.” One could only rely on clarification and hope that “the audience is smart enough not to listen to every nonsense”.
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A leaflet from the “Doctors for Enlightenment”.
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The Medical Association can only act in the event of violations of professional obligations. In the case of Walter Weber, there is this suspicion: He is said to have issued certificates against the mask requirement without ever having seen the patients. The prosecutor is investigating.
Tips in Messenger forums
In the forums of the messenger service Telegram, the names of doctors who issue such certificates are in great demand. A note there says, for example: “It’s best to call and say on the phone that you need an appointment for your daughter. It’s about a headache.”
The head of a nursing service in Hamburg is also active in such a forum and advertises with the slogan “Competent and Reliable”. On his homepage he represents the relevant criticism against the state and the media, doubts the sense of tests and vaccines – and warns against wearing protective masks. He cannot explain how one would like to take care of the most vulnerable group of people.
Legally “opinion protected by freedom of expression”
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Medical President Pedram Emami (archive photo) speaks of a “vanishingly small group” of doctors.
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From a legal point of view, corona deniers are not an issue among doctors – provided they do not endanger trust in the entire health system. Jens Brütting from the Bucerius Law School says: “If you partially refer to questionable facts, then it is still regularly disguised in an opinion and thus still an opinion protected by freedom of expression – as long as it is not consciously and purposefully wrong. “
The fact that doctors use their supposed medical expertise to torpedo the work of their reputable colleagues is annoying for the Medical Association, but not a broken leg. “As stressful and annoying as this issue with these colleagues is, they are by no means the majority,” says Medical Association President Emami. “It’s a tiny group.” The Medical Association is counting on groups such as the “Doctors for Education” to be dealt with by the end of the pandemic at the latest.
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