{"id":3234,"date":"2017-10-23T13:39:53","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T12:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=3234"},"modified":"2018-08-19T12:43:13","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T11:43:13","slug":"theres-a-new-declaration-of-geneva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2017\/10\/23\/theres-a-new-declaration-of-geneva\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s a New Declaration of Geneva!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Iain Brassington<\/strong><\/p>\n

Contain your excitement if you can…<\/p>\n

The World Medical Association has issued its latest version of the Declaration of Geneva<\/span><\/a>. \u00a0(h\/t to Mark Rapa for bringing this to my attention.) \u00a0This is apparently something that it does every decade, tinkering with phrasing as it sees fit.<\/p>\n

So, then: what does it say? \u00a0Well, for my money, the answer to that is “Not a lot”. \u00a0Indeed, it’s notable for just how vague it is – if it’s supposed to be a statement of the underlying ethical principles of medicine (and it is: the blurb that introduces it states that it “outlines in concise terms the professional duties of physicians and affirms the ethical principles of the global medical profession”), it doesn’t really do all that fantastic a job. \u00a0It’s probably worth looking at point-by-point to see exactly what’s going on.<\/p>\n

I’ll say at the outset that I was put on alert by the first clause of the Declaration, which says that as a member of the medical profession, physicians “SOLEMNLY PLEDGE to dedicate my life to the service of humanity”. \u00a0But the problem is that that’s absurd. \u00a0You can’t expect people to devote their lives<\/em> to the service of humanity, and if you can’t expect people to devote their lives to something, either you have to ditch the idea of having that as a pledge, or you have to accept that the pledge is pretty piecrust. \u00a0I’m not wholly sure what “humanity” means anyway.\u00a0 It’s presumably more than just “humans”, because there’s a lot of medical practice that doesn’t serve humanity in any particularly grand sense – unless, of course, one serves humanity in abstracto<\/em> by serving particular humans.\u00a0 But that being the case, there’s any number of things that serve humanity.\u00a0 Indeed, by being entirely self-centred, one would be serving humanity insofar as that it’s manifested in one particular human.\u00a0 And as for pledging one’s life to the service of humanity…\u00a0 Well, wouldn’t that imply that retirement is wrong?\u00a0 That one ought not to clock off at the end of the day and go to a party, on the basis that the wine will impair your ability to serve humanity for a few hours?\u00a0 Or that it might be morally wrong to choose certain specialities?\u00a0 (One might think that something like public health ethics serves humanity more than does cosmetic surgery, for example; but in that case, would that imply that medics have an obligation to practise the former over the latter?)<\/p>\n

Incidentally: what’s the difference between a pledge and a solemn pledge? \u00a0Is it simply a matter of captialisation?<\/p>\n

A pledge that begins with ridiculous hyperbole, and the first line of which is never going to gain adherence, isn’t a pledge that is begging to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

What else is there?<\/p>\n