Our popular first book in the Covid Perspectives series, with three print-runs.
Note: We now have an updated and enlarged second edition! – click here for the new description and details.
“The picture we have of viruses and their significance for human beings and nature has fundamentally changed in the last two decades but with hardly any of this more widely known … Viruses are the oldest, the most common and the most broadly distributed organic structures that evolution has ever created. Viruses basically are the most ancient building blocks of life; without this knowledge we will not be able to understand their role and the part they play in the course of illness.“
Dr T. Hardtmuth, author of ‘What Covid-19 Can Teach Us‘
Published by InterActions
Translated by Bernard Jarman
with a Foreword by Dr Michaela Gloeckler
ISBN 978-0-9528364-4-5, May 2021, Pb, 94 pp, £7.50.
Dr Thomas Hardtmuth tackles the many issues of the Covid-19 Corona pandemic, including:
Hardtmuth proceeds from the premise that we first need a thorough understanding of the significance of viruses not just as a cause of illnesses but as a medium, under the right conditions, for building and maintaining health, as a carrier and changer of genetic information in the service of evolution. The more we merely view them as enemies to be fought, the more it will be that we will consign ourselves to battleground stations, with all that that entails. With COVID-19, governments in fact have described it as a war.
The newest research and understanding, though, is leading to very different conclusions. The prevalent view of a virus attacking us and making us ill, laying the blame fully on the virus, is outdated. Its effect depends on the situation and most importantly the ‘host‘, ie the person – it is not a simple question of cause and effect – or dots on a computer chart touching each other and ‘causing infection’, as computer modelling tends to be done.
This short book takes the discussion further, delving in more detail into subjects such as the PCR tests and the so-called Ct (or amplification) values; the psychology of fear and power; the inner-outer relationship between human health and environmental health; and the effects of fear as well as other factors on the immune system. In addition, he introduces the welcome subject of alternative therapies and the controversial subject around the uses and risks of vaccination, both in general and more specifically with regard to the current Covid vaccines. On the latter he details in comprehensible form the processes both by which the different types of vaccines have been produced as well as the different mechanisms by which they affect human cells and immune systems. He goes on to consider the testing processes in production which were significantly shortened for Covid vaccines, the potential risks, and the immunological responses in the organism through vaccines in comparison to responses arising naturally through actual infections. They are not the same. This leads into a comprehensive survey of the functioning of the human immune system.
In all the sections, the effort is made to explore the issues from a broad, open-minded and holistic perspective, showing how this approach has an important significance also for the details of the Covid pandemic and the various measures being taken. On reading the book, we will feel much more informed, ready for taking individual responsibility based on an informed common sense rather than the fear which is so much propagated.
“Let us be open for a genuine and fair discussion – it is after all the very foundation of all healthy human culture.” Dr T. Hardtmuth
“Hardtmuth’s book is an invaluable contribution to the Corona literature.” Dr M. Glöckler
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-Württemberg University of Applied Sciences. 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. A particular area of research of his has been in virology and the role that viruses play in evolution and health. He has written numerous books and articles (most in German) on holistic and social issues in medicine and microbiology. His latest book, to be published first in German by Salumet Verlag in summer 2021, is on the human microbiome – an approx title translation: ‘The human microbiome: The Importance of Microorganisms and Viruses in Medicine, Evolution and Ecology – Ways to a Systemic Perspective‘.