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Doctors
groups pen update to ancient Hippocratic oath 
By Ellen
Sorokin
THE WASHINGTON
TIMES
Doctors dealing with medical advancements
such as cloning and private health care now can seek answers in a new code
of ethics — a set of guidelines that will act as a supplement to what some
medical officials call an outdated Hippocratic oath.
The authors of the new code said yesterday
the "Charter on Medical Professionalism" will better help doctors
meet the needs of patients in the 21st century and defend patients' access
to medical care, an element not included in the more than 2,500-year-old
oath.
It urges doctors to keep up with scientific
advances such as technology improvements and work toward providing a fair
distribution of health care resources.
Medical ethics long had been influenced by
the Hippocratic oath, which was written by the Greek physician Hippocrates,
the father of modern medicine.
Patient autonomy and choice are issues
relevant to doctors today, but not during the life of Hippocrates, between
460 B.C. and 377 B.C.
"The Hippocratic oath offers good
advice," said Dr. Troyen Brennan, chairman of the Medical
Professionalism Project whose members wrote the charter. "But what we
need now is more specific advice and this is what the charter sets out to
do."
The Hippocratic oath has been used as a guide
of conduct for the medical profession for centuries. It tells doctors,
"You will exercise your art solely for the cure of your patients and
will give no drug, perform no operation, for a criminal purpose."
The new charter calls for doctors to be
honest with patients, provide them with choices on managing their health,
improve access and quality of care for patients and avoid inappropriate
financial or sexual conduct with patients.
George Alberti, president of the Royal
College of Physicians in England, called the new charter "an
aide-memoir to modern medical practice."
"This modern interpretation of what is
expected of professionals in areas of patient confidentiality, access to
health care and ethical conduct is much easier to understand than some of
the other oaths and ethical codes in medicine," Dr. Alberti said.
"We hope it will lead to a greater understanding of what it means to
be a physician, particularly in a climate where many areas of
professionalism are under attack from the media and politicians the world
over."
The charter was composed over the last year
by the American Board of Internal Medicine, the American College of
Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine, and the European
Federation of Internal Medicine. The contents of the charter will appear in
this week's editions of the Annals of Internal Medicine and the Lancet.
Members of the three groups said they wrote
the charter because the medical profession today must contend with
"complicated political, legal and market forces," and health standards
are coming under threat in developed countries because of privatization of
health care and uneven distribution of resources.
"Forces that are largely beyond our
control have brought us to circumstances that require a reinstatement of
professional responsibilities," said Dr. Harold C. Sox, editor of the
Annals of Internal Medicine. "The challenge will be to live by these
precepts and to resist efforts to impose a corporate mentality on a
profession of service to others."
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