[2] The Swiss Cancer League described Hamer's approach as "dangerous, especially as it lulls the patients into a false sense of security, so that they are deprived of other effective treatments.
His system came to public attention in 1995, when the parents of a child suffering from cancer refused medical treatment (chemical therapy or chemotherapy) in favour of Hamer's methods.
[5] Hamer was arrested and jailed for twelve months in Germany from 1997 to 1998,[5] and served a prison term from September 2004 to February 2006 in Fleury-Mérogis, France, on counts of fraud and unlicensed practice of medicine.
Hamer's habilitation thesis about the GNM at the University of Tübingen in 1986 was rejected after multiple examinations by several members of the medical faculty, who concluded that his work lacked scientific methods and reproducibility and his arguments did not support his theories.
[9] Hamer lived in voluntary exile in Spain until March 2007, when Spanish medical authorities held him responsible for dozens of preventable deaths.
[12] Sometime after Dirk's death, Hamer developed testicular cancer and thought there was a link between the two events, so he began to develop Germanic new medicine (GNM), which can be summarized in its "five biological laws":[13] Therefore, according to Hamer, no real diseases exist; rather, what established medicine calls a "disease" is actually a "special meaningful program of nature" (sinnvolles biologisches Sonderprogramm) to which bacteria, viruses and fungi belong.
When the parents refused conventional medical therapy for Pilhar, the Austrian government removed their rights of care and control.
[17] After a court ordered conventional cancer treatment with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, Pilhar recovered completely and was still alive in 2010.
[19] Hamer purported that his method is a "Germanic" alternative to mainstream clinical medicine, which he claimed is part of a Jewish conspiracy to decimate non-Jews.
More precisely, Hamer asserted that chemotherapy and morphine are used to "mass murder" Western civilization, while falsely alleging that such treatments are not used in Israel.
Proponents of alternative cancer treatments also regard Hamer's theory skeptically and argue for supportive evidence and proven patient cases.