Dr Trevor Mudge, AMA Vice-President, with Linda Mottram, ABC Radio 'AM'
MOTTRAM: It stood the test of time but now the Hippocratic oath, which originated nearly 2,500 years ago, could be in for some major, and some would argue very overdue, changes, as doctors grapple with new frontiers like genetics and their implications for the doctor/ patient relationship.
Writing in the British Journal, The Lancet, three professional medical bodies, two American and one European have issued a new ethical charter which they're urging all physicians to adopt.
But would Hippocrates, the father of medicine approve? Jo Mazzocchi reports.
MAZZOCCHI: The Hippocratic oath is an ancient guide that stipulates the need for doctors to treat the sick regardless of race, colour, creed or status and of course in 400BC it extended to slaves and even one's enemy, but nearly 2,500 years on, it's time for change, according to Professor Sir George Alberti, the President of the Royal College of Physicians of London.
ALBERTI: The Hippocratic oath I took when I started medical school but that was many, many years ago and I don't think people bother with it any more so I think we need to get across to the young people what being a professional and a doctor really means.
MAZZOCCHI: Do you think Hippocrates would agree with what you've done?
ALBERTI: I think Hippocrates would almost certainly agree and he's probably kicking himself, up there some where, for having missed out on a couple of the points we've got in there.
I don't think it's so much the end as it has gently faded away like the smile on the Cheshire cat. It is used so little now that I think there is a lacuna, a gap that we now are filling.
MAZZOCCHI: Professor Alberti says the oath did not envisage the ethical problems raised by genetics or social justice or equality of health care.
ALBERTI: You know you are there to do your patient good and there's this terribly difficult question which does come in now of do you screen people for diseases when you have no apparent cure for those diseases and I think that is something we need to explain much better for people. So, do you want to know that you're likely to get dementia in 10 years time? I mean those are the sorts of questions we now have to address.
MAZZOCCHI: Dr Trevor Mudge is the Vice President of the Australian Medical Association. He also chairs the AMA's Ethics Committee and believes this new code also reflects third party intervention in the patient / doctor relationship that not even Hippocrates could have predicted.
MUDGE: I think the pressures from third parties are getting stronger and stronger. That the governments, our governments, all governments in the world have got a problem with the cost of medicine. That if they want to underwrite the cost of medicine, they've got a vested interest in reducing their costs and that actually means, like the health fund, that you make a profit if you deny treatment to people.
The doctor's independence is not something that the doctor needs to jump up and down about, it's something that society needs to jump up and down about because independence is not in the doctors' interests, it's in the interests of patients.
MOTTRAM: Dr Trevor Mudge, the Vice President of the Australian Medical Association speaking to Jo Mazzocchi.
Ends