Medicine in the Stranglehold of Profit

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 and conflicts of interest into health care to such an extent that there is a growing alienation of the helping professions from their own core 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 corruption into the health field; Hardtmuth further illustrates how income inequalities and inappropriately applied economic rationality are correlated with illnesses in people as well as ‘illnesses’ in wider society and the environment. Independent thinking, courage and reflection are urgently needed on the core value of a civil society based on mutual support…. In the Afterword, Dr House describes how a separation of economic, political and cultural/spiritual life (which includes health-care) is urgently needed and how a number of initiatives have recently been started which point in this direction.