The Hippocratic Oath: Misreading and Rereading an Ancient Text

• Published in: Perspectives in biology and medicine Vol. 67; no. 3; pp. 370 - 385
• Main Author: Baker, Robert
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Johns Hopkins University Press 01.06.2024
• Subjects: Abortion; Apprenticeship; Bioethics; Economics; Ethics, Medical - history; Euthanasia - ethics; Euthanasia - history; Germany; Health care; Hippocrates (460?-377? BC); Hippocratic Oath; History, 20th Century; History, Ancient; Humans; Medical profession; Medical research; Medicine; Morality; National Socialism - history; Patients; Physicians; Professional ethics; Professionals; Prosecutions; Reproductive health; Social interactions; Germany
• ISSN: 0031-5982; 1529-8795; 1529-8795
• DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2024.a936216

The Hippocratic oath is such an enduring icon of medical morality that physicians in Nazi Germany invoked it to protest Euthanasie , the systematized killing of weak or sick children, people with incurable diseases, hospitalized criminals (a category applicable to gays), geriatric patients, long-term patients, patients not of German blood (Jews and Romani), and people with disabilities. Several expert witnesses at the 1945 Nuremberg Medical Trial also cited the oath to condemn Nazi physicians' abuse of human research subjects. Noting these invocations, in 1947 the physicians who founded the World Medical Association modernized the Hippocratic oath to convey to future medical students its foundational precepts: benefitting the sick, not harming them, not breaching confidentiality, and not treating patients unjustly, irrespective of their gender or social status. This article presents a historically accurate reading of the oath's strange-seeming passages to show that it does not prohibit abortion, euthanasia (medical aid in dying), or surgery. The article also contends that oath-swearing remains an important asset in teaching clinicians their role responsibilities, and that its ethics supports women's rights to reproductive health care and can valorize challenges to venture-capitalist and for-profit managements that prioritize profitability over providing quality health care for patients.