Hippocratic Oath
While I drove from Grande Prairie to Medford, I listened to the first volume of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. The volume included an interview with Nigel M. DeS. Cameron about his (then) recent book, The New Medicine: Life and Death After Hippocrates.
I appreciate Cameron’s call for Christian doctors and nurses to form their own alternative subculture, that is, to maintain their own standards, grounded on God’s word, in spite of the trends in the medical culture around. I recall, though I haven’t read the book, that Jakob van Bruggen in Het leven is de moeite waard argues that, in a time when many opt for euthanasia and many in the medical community are starting to think that euthanasia is a good option, we need Christian nurses who are committed to providing paliative care for those who are dying slowly. Cameron’s point sounds similar.
But the jarring note in the interview was Cameron’s recommendation of the Hippocratic Oath. I grant that the content of the oath may be good, but surely Christians can do something better.
Cameron wants to have that oath, which was originally produced in a pagan society, used as common ground between modern pagans and Christians. “Look,” we Christians can say. “Here is a pagan oath with which we can agree and with which you pagans ought to agree.”
Never mind that modern day unbelievers, with a few exceptions, are hardly “pagans,” comparable in belief to guys like Hippocrates. If Christians doctors are going to form their own subculture and follow their own biblical standards, then why should they base what they’re doing on Hippocrates? Why should they even bother trying to make themselves sound acceptable by an appeal to an ancient pagan medical oath?
What about “marketing” a Christian approach to the rest of the world so that others follow suit? It seems to me that the early church did just fine at such “marketing” in the midst of ancient pagan culture when the early Christians doctored, nursed, and cared for the pagans, not according to pagan standards, but according to biblical ones.