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to scrap the Hippocratic Oath for doctors on the ground that the passages forbidding abortion and euthanasia are outdated.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.”

Abortion was legalised in Italy in 1978, a decision that was confirmed by referendum three years later, despite opposition from the Vatican. Euthanasia — also vehemently opposed by the Church — remains banned, but recent high-profile cases involving the terminally ill have provoked a debate on whether Italy should follow the example of the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland and legalise it.

Carlo Flamigni, a professor of gynaecology and obstetrics at Bologna University, said that he refused to take the Hippocratic Oath when he graduated in 1958. Fernando Aiuti, professor of immunology at Rome University, told Corriere della Sera that some of his students had told him they disagreed with it, “and they have a point”.

Giuseppe Remuzzi, professor of neurology at Bergamo University, noted that in Britain The Lancet had proposed an alternative version five years ago. The oath has already been modified in many Western medical schools.

However, Luigi Frati, head of surgery at Rome University, argued that the original oath “reminds new doctors of certain fundamental concepts . . . they feel they belong to a scientific community with a long tradition”. Mauro Moroni, professor of infectious diseases at Milan University, said that he gave his students the oath “written on parchment in the original Greek. Some values never change”.

FATHER OF MEDICINE

— Hippocrates was born on the island of Cos in Greece in the year 460BC and gained a reputation as the greatest physician of his age

— He was one of the first doctors to reject notion that spirits or divine disfavour could affect health

— He was the first to advocate cleanliness, exercise and rest as methods of keeping healthy

— He founded a medical school on Cos and devised the oath of medical ethics that is still taken today. He died in 377BC

Source: San Jose State University

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