“This book ought to be read far and wide; being well informed will help us all in the time to come.” Dr James Dyson
In this book, Dr Hardtmuth chronicles the takeover of the medical field by private companies and corporations over the past decades, bringing the profit motive into health care to such an extent that there is a growing alienation of the helping professions from their own identity. Human care, attention and appropriate help are increasingly hindered by the specifications and supposed constraints of economic logic and rationality.
The one-sided profit orientation has not only brought greed and corruption into the health field; Hardtmuth illustrates graphically how the resulting income inequalities and inappropriate application of economic rationality to cultural life is correlated with illnesses in people as well as ‘illnesses’ in society and nature as well. Fear is the fuel in the medical business – a Zeitgeist has us in its grip, against which only one thing can help: independent thinking, courage and reflection on the cultural value of a civil society based on mutual support.
In the Afterword, Dr House takes this further, describing how a separation of economic, political and cultural/spiritual life (which includes health-care and education) urgently needs to be established, and how a number of initiatives have recently been started which point in this direction.
About the Author
Dr. Thomas Hardtmuth, MD, is a specialist in general surgery/thoracic surgery, freelance author, and long-time lecturer in health sciences and social medicine at the Baden-Wurttemberg University of Applied Sciences. He studied medicine at the TU and LMU Munich. He has been working as a doctor in various clinics in southern Germany since 1985, most recently as senior physician for general surgery and thoracic surgery at the Heidenheim Clinic. Virology and the role of viruses in nature and evolution is an area of research specialisation. Dr Hardtmuth has published numerous articles and books, most in German. …. Richard House, MA [Oxon], Ph.D. is a chartered psychologist and freelance educational consultant/campaigner in Stroud, UK. He was previously a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood at the University of Winchester and lectured in psychotherapy and psychology at the University of Roehampton. He has published several books on education, as well as numerous articles and academic papers. He is editor of Self and Society: International Journal of Humanistic, Existential and Transpersonal Psychology.
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