Medicine no longer purports to "first, do no harm"

[encerent]

They admit now that in medicine these days doing no harm is not practical. This old command is not compatible with modern medicine and isn't part of medical culture anymore. If we did no harm then we couldn't help people with chemotherapies, vaccines, surgeries, and all modern drugs. In fact medicine now is "first, do harm," and that is the oath medical students should take.

First, do no harm - Harvard Health

...

www.health.harvard.edu

...:if physicians took "first, do no harm" literally, no one would have surgery, even if it was lifesaving. We might stop ordering mammograms, because they could lead to a biopsy for a non-cancerous lump....

 

[gaze]

they don't want the public knowing that medical malpractice kills 400,000 people a year (only including the US), which would even be unimaginably higher if they were to count long term damage from many treatments that don't cause an immediate death

 

[encerent]

they don't want the public knowing that medical malpractice kills 400,000 people a year (only including the US), which would even be unimaginably higher if they were to count long term damage from many treatments that don't cause an immediate death

I wish it was just the malpractice killing people. It's the standard practice that kills an order of magnitude more.

 

[haidut]

They admit now that in medicine these days doing no harm is not practical. This old command is not compatible with modern medicine and isn't part of medical culture anymore. If we did no harm then we couldn't help people with chemotherapies, vaccines, surgeries, and all modern drugs. In fact medicine now is "first, do harm," and that is the oath medical students should take.

First, do no harm - Harvard Health

...

www.health.harvard.edu

Yep. In fact, they (quietly) stopped doing the Hippocratic Oath at medical schools about a decade ago. The media did almost no coverage on that but the few "journalists" that asked public health officials on why this change, the response was "The Oath is meaningless in modern times". In a twisted way, that is correct but for all the wrong reasons.

Why the Hippocratic Oath is disappearing from medical schools

Medical schools increasingly are asking students to recite alternatives to the once-ubiquitous Hippocratic Oath—including, at some institutions, oaths customized to the graduating class, Melissa Bailey reports for STAT News.

www.advisory.com

So long, Hippocrates. Medical students choose their own oaths

Future doctors all over the United States take an oath every year, vowing to consider patients' social and economic well-being, as well as physical health.

www.statnews.com

 

[Missenger]

"The Oath is meaningless in modern times" amounts to not wanting to adhere to the morals or dogma that goes along with holding one's life and health in their own hands as a 'doctor' (and the fines that would go along with it), they would rather waive responsibility to "Covid-19", before that it was various untested pharmaceuticals and other varieties of 'diseases'.

 

[tankasnowgod]

They admit now that in medicine these days doing no harm is not practical. This old command is not compatible with modern medicine and isn't part of medical culture anymore. If we did no harm then we couldn't help people with chemotherapies, vaccines, surgeries, and all modern drugs. In fact medicine now is "first, do harm," and that is the oath medical students should take.

First, do no harm - Harvard Health

...

www.health.harvard.edu

I've actually had similar thoughts about the idea of "First, do no harm." After all, I have donated lots of blood and also done several blood tests, and each one did technical "harm." But I would say the harm was minor, and those things had a net positive effect on my own health, and maybe others, too.

I think this gets more to it...

For example, here’s a line from one translation of the Hippocratic Oath:

"I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous."

I think that would be good overall, as translations are imperfect, anyway. And if everything were strictly between the doctor and the patient, I would think the vast majority of doctors would operate this way, oath or not.

Buuuuut..... there are other entities involved today. Namely, Insurance Companies, Regulatory agencies (like the FDA, CDC, and state medical boards), and Government Insurance (like Medicare and Medicaid) and others, like Drug Companies. If a patient's interest doesn't conflict with these third parties, he still is likely to get decent care. But if they do conflict, it's probably the third party interests that will take priority, especially since they now have more power over the doctor than a patient does. They are, after all, paying the bills and allowing the doctor to perform an otherwise illegal act, through "licensing." Maybe that line in the oath can be re-written to-

"I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of the insurance companies, regulators, government agencies and drug companies, and maybe think about the patient afterwards."

 

[hei]

They haven't been "first doing no harm" anyway, or else their practice of mutilating newborn boys' genitals would have been done away with long ago.

 

[Rick K]

They haven't been "first doing no harm" anyway, or else their practice of mutilating newborn boys' genitals would have been done away with long ago.

?

 

[Marcine]

Doctors swear an oath to Apollo! They're part of the Beast system.