The Ethics of Medicine

"You can’t legislate morality. But you can give incentives for people to act in a moral fashion, regardless of what their beliefs are," Miriam Joseph says. She is a Registered Nurse in the critical care unit of North Shore Evanston Hospital. I spoke to her about her thoughts on the Hippocratic Oath and how it affects her work. "I think it plays into everybody’s practice, the morality of what we’re doing," she said, sipping a cup of green tea. Hard decisions always have to be made in medicine. These decisions include things as simple as whether or not to give a patient a minimally invasive surgery, and as complex as what to do in the case of a young girl becoming pregnant and wanting an abortion, against her parent's wishes or knowledge.

I first became interested in the Hippocratic Oath after spending seven months researching medical ethics and fallibility of humans practicing medicine. While researching new medical practices, I stumbled across the text of the original Hippocratic Oath. In reading it, it seemed to be very outdated and worn. I decided to refocus my research on the Oath and the few revisions that have been made to it since it was written 2500 years ago. While doing so, I spoke to two medical practitioners, Miriam Joseph, and Dr. Carol Cislak, an obstetrician and gynecologist at the same hospital as Ms. Joseph. Discussing the Hippocratic Oath with medical practitioners has provided me with valuable insights into the Oath's role in modern medicine. I investigated how issues in abortion, resource distribution, and end of life care affect doctors and their decision making process.

In the late 5th century BC, the Greek physician Hippocrates wrote what has come to be known as the Hippocratic Oath. He intended it to be a...

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..., be honored? Or should the organ be wasted? Should a person in the country or region that the organ is located be favored over a person higher on the list from another country or region? If two candidates are equally needy, how should their placement on the list be determined? By lottery? By seniority? Should a younger person be preferred over an older person, in terms of benefit from the organ? Should a mentally incapable person automatically disqualified on the assumption that they will not be able to stick to their anti-organ-rejection medication? More controversially, if a person received a transplant but the organ is failing, should they be moved up the list due to their dire need, or should another person be given a chance at a first transplant? Without basic guidelines, doctors are left to guess the answers to these questions and hope that they are right.