The Hippocratic Oath
First, Do No Harm
I wonder what the Gods are thinking when they survey the world today? Confucius wrote in the Book of Rites in 500 B.C, “Do not take liberties with the Gods or weary them.” Today, we certainly must be pushing our limits of both.
But what would the Gods say about the western medical establishment? They no doubt would applaud its huge advances in medical treatment. But their praise may be short-lived. They might charge that physicians had forgotten one of the most cherished parts of the Hippocratic Oath that stresses, “First, do no harm.”
They might chastise doctors for their unholy alliance with pharmaceutical companies. Physicians, who have deviated so far from the Hippocratic edict, that it’s mind-boggling. They’ve also forgotten Voltaire, the French philosopher, who counselled, “The art of medicine is amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”
So what has happened? Rather than using good sense, treatment is now guided by multinational drug companies who have seduced doctors and the North American public into believing there is a convenient pill to ease every ache and pain. The primary motive of corporations is to program people into believing they’re ill and need a variety of questionable and often dangerous medications. Meantime, so many in the rest of the world suffer malnutrition, homelessness, with no resource for pills for their pain.
Getting back to the Basics
“The state cannot and should not do for its citizens what they can and should do for themselves.”
— Abraham Lincoln
When a Chimp
Makes a Better Doctor
Have you seen this sign in your doctor’s office? It reads, “One problem per visit, please.” How did this asinine situation happen?
Could it be because doctors continually lose battles with politicians? Labour leaders will say, “You need good negotiators. Doctors are not trained how to bargain.” Without skilled negotiators to deal with politicians it’s like sending a 98 pound weakling into the ring with Mohammed Ali. Rather, physicians desperately need a skilled leader to fight for their interests. Instead they waste millions on part-time, rotating presidents and committees of doctors to look after the financial interests of the country’s physicians. The result is a fee schedule provides incentives for doctors to treat one problem at a time.
What does this mean to patients if they have a one-problem-doctor? This decision threatens anything from simply the annoyance, inconvenience and waste of time of having to return to the doctor for several symptoms. Not to mention inefficient medical care. But there’s a much more hazardous side to this approach. I’d predict that-one problem-doctors are going to miss serious and life-threatening diseases.
The Right to Choose
Medical Assistance in Dying
It’s ironic that veterinarians are so compassionate about the end of life for dying animals. Yet some physicians, who often see the agony of human death, can be so lacking in compassion, and are outright cruel.
Canada has finally allowed legalized medically assisted death under certain conditions, a huge step in the right direction. But it’s not a perfect solution because man’s inhumanity to man remains. Veterinarians do not insist that legal injections for animals in pain must be delayed because death is not immediately imminent. Patients in agony know when life is meaningless. So should doctors.
Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease gradually descend into nothingness. They have no recollection of family, are incontinent of urine and feces, and sometimes belligerent. Yet, since they are not at imminent risk of dying, they linger on in this hell day after day, sometimes for years. At this point, unable even to plead for death.
Further confounding is the attitude of some palliative care physicians. They see agonizing death almost on a daily basis. Yet, a significant number refuse, for religious reasons, to end the life of a person who pleads to leave this planet.
But in our real world I believe it makes no sense for patients to endure needless pain. And they, only they, should decide when enough is enough.
The W. Gifford-Jones Living Will can be obtained here.
Words as old as time…
Inscribed in Greek in the sanctuary of Kineas in modern-day Afghanistan:
As a child, be well-behaved.
As a youth, be self-controlled.
As an adult, be just.
As an elder, be wise.
As one dying, be without pain.
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