Italian doctors want to scrap ‘outdated’ Hippocratic Oath
Richard Owen in Rome
December 11, 2007

Senior medical figures in Italy are campaigning to scrap the Hippocratic Oath for doctors on the ground that the passages forbidding abortion and euthanasia are outdated.

Giorgio Iannetti, a professor of surgery at Rome University, said that the oath, which is read out by medical students when they graduate, must either be abolished or “radically modified”.

“There are passages which are no longer relevant to our times and which newly qualified doctors know in advance they will not be able to respect,” Professor Iannetti told a medical conference in Rome.

The oath, written by Hippocrates, the Greek father of medicine, in the 4th century BC, obliges doctors to heal the sick “according to my ability and judgment” and to “keep them from harm and injustice”. However, a new doctor also swears to “neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.” the rest