Medicine in the Stranglehold Of Profit
The threat to the art of healing and the social fabric
and the new orientation needed for truly looking after health
by Thomas Hardtmuth, M.D.
with an afterword by Richard House, Ph.D.

“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.

“This book spares no punches, making an outspoken clarion call to wake up in the face of the horrendous consequences of the unholy politico-economic alliances currently prevailing in society, especially as these manifest within all aspects of medical provision and insidiously pervade a great deal of medical prescribing. Generating, supporting and connecting to new initiatives divorced from insidious and self-perpetuating economic incentives and collusions – as outlined so successfully in this book – offers some hope of re-establishing transparency, accountability and ultimately sanity in civilisation.”   Dr James Dyson

 “We’ve known for years that something is fundamentally awry with modern medicine: this thought-provoking book sheds much light on why this might be so, challenges taken-for-granted narratives about healthcare, and describes innovative initiatives spawning all over the world that are pioneering a better, post-pharmaceutical approach to human health and well-being. Essential reading.”
Dr Christian Buckland, Chair, 
United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy

“The first half of the book will have you shaking your head in disbelief; the second half vigorously nodding in agreement. Thomas Hardtmuth M.D. accurately diagnoses the problems in our current healthcare system and, thankfully, offers us some cures. With this glorious new book we are inching ever closer to a radical reorientation of healthcare and healing.”
Dr. Leah Gray, 
Doctor and Founder of Empower. Heal. Nourish.

An InterActions title
96 pages with colour illustrations.
Paperback. 
19.8 x 12.9 cms, 8 x 5 inches.
ISBN 9781915594006