Letter: Oath shouldn’t mean extending agony

The ostensible purpose of the Hippocratic Oath is to serve as an ethical guideline of conduct among medical practitioners, and while it is meant to serve that purpose still, focus on financial gain has since eclipsed its meaning.

Entire elements have been ignored when contradicting profit opportunity, or changing social sentiments (“I will not give a woman an abortion,” … “and never do harm to anyone”). The medical profession picks and chooses from this pledge what to hold sacred or reject; depending on how it serves its selfish interest best.

How many sick, today, will suffer and die because a doctor will not care for them purely on financial grounds? So, spare me the mention of that oath.

When one is suffering while dying, and their life is but a living torment, extension of their agony is the product of corruption and deserves punishment.

It doesn’t help; it’s doing “harm” instead.

Arrest this selective idolatry of an ancient promise and aid the suffering; whether it’s to help them live or die. All else is just hypocrisy.

Had it been Dr. Kevorkian, instead of Hippocrates, who wrote that oath, millions less would had suffered the living hell of wide-eyed mental anguish and screaming physical discomfort at the gates of death.

Michael E. White

Brush Prairie