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In this book, Dr. Thomas Hardtmuth chronicles the takeover of the medical field by private companies and corporations over recent decades, bringing a profit motive into healthcare--to such an extent that there is growing alienation between the helping professions and their own identity. Human care, attention, and appropriate help are hindered increasingly by the specifications and supposed constraints of economic logic and rationality.
One-sided profit orientation has brought not only greed and corruption into the health field; in addition, Hardtmuth illustrates graphically how the resulting income inequalities and inappropriate application of economic rationality to culture in society is correlated with illnesses in people, as well as "illnesses" in society and nature.
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 the separation in society of economics, politics, and culture (which includes healthcare and education) urgently needs to be established, and how a number of initiatives have recently been started that point in this direction.
About the author
Dr. Thomas Hardtmuth, MD, born in 1956, is a physician and freelance writer. He studied medicine in Munich and works as a senior physician specializing in thoracic surgery at the Heidenheim Clinic. Dr. Hardtmuth lectures and leads seminars in the field of medical and anthropological issues. His publications include
Das verborgene Ich: Aspekte zum Verständnis der Krebskrankheit (The hidden "I" Aspects of understanding cancer), 2003 and
Denkfehler. Das Dilemma der Hirnforschung (Errors in thinking: The dilemma of brain research), 2006.
