Perspect Biol Med. 2024;67(3):370-385. 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.
希波克拉底誓言是医学道德的一个持久标志，以至于纳粹德国的医生援引它来抗议安乐死，即有系统地杀害体弱或患病的儿童、患有不治之症的人、住院罪犯（适用于同性恋者）、老年患者、长期患者、非德国血统的患者（犹太人、罗姆人）和残疾人。1945 年纽伦堡医疗审判中的几位专家证人也引用了该誓言，谴责纳粹医生滥用人类研究对象。鉴于这些援引，1947 年创立世界医学协会的医生对希波克拉底誓言进行了现代化改造，向未来的医学生传达其基本戒律：造福病人，不伤害他们，不泄露机密，不偏袒病人，不论其性别或社会地位。本文对誓言中看似奇怪的段落进行了历史上准确的解读，表明它并不禁止堕胎、安乐死（医疗辅助死亡）或手术。本文还认为，宣誓仍然是教授临床医生角色责任的重要资产，其伦理学支持妇女享有生殖保健的权利，并可以为优先考虑盈利而不是为患者提供优质医疗保健的风险投资和营利性管理层的挑战赋予价值。
