WorldNetDaily: Doctors stir revival of Hippocratic ethic

And it's about time.

Hippocrates of Cos originally had doctors swear to six specific points. The first we can probably discount because it treats the master-apprentice relationship that most doctors had in those days, and even in America before Abraham Flexner issued his blistering report on the sorry state of medical education. But the other points are salient and relevant.

At issue here is this point of the Oath:

I will give no deadly preparation to anyone, even if asked, nor suggest such a course; neither will I give to any woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep clean and holy my life and my art.

(Some have quoted the above to read "I will keep pure...", but in Hippocrates' day, the word that would translate as "pure" would actually mean "one-thousand fine" and would refer to refined metal, coming as it does from the Greek word for fire.)

After the Supreme Court's decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, medical schools everywhere ceased to swear their graduates to the original Hippocratic Oath. When I got my degree, I swore to a watered-down Oath that did not contain the above clause. So now Dr. Patrick Johnston of Zanesville, Ohio, has decided to do something about that. He has recruited nine physicians thus far in his new Association of Pro-life Physicians to declare publicly that they stand by the original Oath and even to hit the local speaking circuit. They even have erected billboards around Zanesville to make their point. (Check out the photograph taken from the famous intra-uterine operation on a pre-born child with a spinal malformation. See that little hand reaching up to grab the surgeon's finger? Most pictures are worth a thousand words; that one is worth a million.)

Of course, the Christian Medical and Dental Associations are way ahead of this group. They even have their own version of the Physicians' Oath. You will find it, and all the other position statements of this fine organization, here.