The Hellenic Physicists' Union Called "Quantum Medicine" an Unfounded Term on 12 September 2026: What the Word Still Covers, From Wearable MEG to Korea's Quantum Nanosensor
Quentir Medicine Monitor
Evidence-based insights for quantum medicine.
On 12 September 2026 the board of the Hellenic Physicists' Union adopted a press release titled "On the abuse of the term quantum" and posted it on its website the next evening. The one-page text lists what a quantum phenomenon is, credits the second quantum revolution with applications in biology and medicine, and then calls "quantum medicine", "quantum therapy" and "quantum consciousness" unfounded terms. It traces them to Deepak Chopra in 1989, cites Chopra's own 2007 statement that the phrase was a literary metaphor, recalls the 1998 Ig Nobel prize in physics, and adds that the degrees issued by a self-styled "Quantum University" in Hawaii are unrecognized, quoting McGill University's science office. Greece's health minister Adonis Georgiadis said the same on television on 15 September in plainer words: quantum medicine recognized by science does not exist.
This Monitor publishes under the phrase the physicists reject, so the release deserves a careful reading, and a defensive one would miss what it concedes. The physicists are right about the word's history, and their release names no case, no clinic and no practitioner; Greek outlets reported it on 13 September alongside an Athens investigation, a connection the press drew and the release does not. The release also credits, in general terms, applications of quantum physics in biology and medicine. The Hellenic Physicists' Union statement separates a metaphor from measurable physics, and this Monitor applies that separation to two examples of its own choosing, which the union neither names nor endorses; that qualification is stated here once and holds for the whole piece. A wearable magnetoencephalography system built on optically pumped magnetometers, published in Nature in 2018, uses quantum sensing to measure brain magnetic fields and was demonstrated on healthy volunteers, with clinical use as the stated aim. A quantum nanosensor for cardiotoxicity funded by Korea's health ministry on 31 August 2026 is a funded research program with a named measurement still to be made, and no result yet. A practitioner's CV that lists a "quantum medicine" degree from an unaccredited online school is neither, and the difference is checkable by anyone who asks what was measured.