[8] Bhakdi studied at the Universities of Bonn, Gießen, Mainz and Copenhagen, and at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology in Freiburg.

[1] He studied medicine at the University of Bonn from 1963 to 1970, during part of which (from 1966 to 1970) he was a scholarship holder of the German Academic Exchange Service.

[14] From 1972, Bhakdi researched the functioning of the body's non-specific defenses at the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology in Freiburg.

He contributed to a better understanding of the mechanisms with which the large molecules of the complement system in the blood render exogenous substances harmless.

In 1984 the Royal Society in London invited Bhakdi to present the concept of cell membrane damage by pore formers.

In 1989 he discovered through animal experiments that the complement component 5 is activated in the vessel walls where low density lipoprotein (LDL) is deposited.

[19] According to current understanding, atherosclerosis is a polygenic disease caused by a complex interplay of several environmental and genetic factors, especially cholesterol.

In 1998, Bhakdi and his team of colleagues put forward the "Mainz hypothesis" that atherosclerosis is only caused monocausally by the lack of removal of LDL.

[20] According to Bhakdi's hypothesis, LDL is generally not oxidized, but cholesterol is also absorbed by monocytes and foam cells are formed.

If, however, a certain amount of LDL accumulates locally on the vascular wall and cannot be removed, part of the immune system causes inflammatory reactions that lead to atherosclerosis.

[24] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bhakdi started a YouTube channel proposing that the number of deaths stemming from SARS-CoV-2 infection had been overstated.

[27] His criticisms of states' (most particularly Germany's) reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic have included: Bhakdi's claims, in particular in his YouTube videos and in the book Corona Fehlalarm?, have been extensively fact-checked and found to be variously unsubstantiated, misleading, or false.

"[44] Writing for Foreign Policy, in September 2020 Tyson Barker (Head of DGAP's Technology & Global Affairs Program)[45] described Bhakdi as a prominent example from a "crop of debunked but credentialed so-called experts minting conspiracy theories and undermining fact-based information".