Friday, August 2, 2024

A Good Doctor Needs Not Hippocrates

 All mortals are bad but doctors are truly vile.

 Imagine a cop oath: "First, do not steal." Instead of reading you miranda rights, when the cop shows up (for any reason) first they have to promise they're not going to mug you.

 Imagine a retail clerk: "First, do not steal." You walk into the grocery store, and they have to promise not to grab your money and run.

 Imagine a priest. You walk into a temple. They solemnly hold up a hand. "First, do not lie." "Yeah bro I'm totes not going to lie to you, lol. I promised, lmao." 

 Vending machine oath. Imagine your coke machine has a prominent plaque saying, "First, do not poison." Yeah bruv, I swear I won't make you projectile vomit. 

 Plumber oath. "First, do not mix sewage and drinking water." 

 Bricklayer oath. "First, do not collapse." 

 Toaster oath. "First, do not explode." 


 Society simply takes it for granted that doctors want to do you harm so bad they have to explicitly swear not to. Protip: believe society. Yeah, that's true. It makes sense.
 Check: doctors regularly cannot uphold the oath. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 Check2: folk use webmd because they can't gain anything above [absolute amateur hour] via going to a professional.
 Personnel is policy. The kind of person who needs to swear a hippocratic oath should be comprehensively banned from anything resembling medicine. Revenge is sour. The doctor who can swear to hypocrates hippocrates is the doctor who doesn't need to.

8 comments:

MadPiper said...

From Ambrose Beirce

PHYSICIAN, n. One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.

rezzealaux said...

it probably held more weight when oaths in general held weight and isn't supposed to be a particularly load bearing thing itself. tamper evident not tamper proof.

in kusuriya the apothecary was told to inspect a dead body or something by some high ranker and sat and did nothing, why are you not moving, because this is forbidden by my master, why, because this leads to gathering materials from human bodies. that's the axis an apothecary moves on.

similarly, modern NSFW rules don't make sense to me. convention says so long as genitals and breasts are covered, it is Appropriate For All Ages. to me there's already four things wrong in that sentence. but that's what people think.

i think it has to do with distance. plumbers, toasters, cops (historically), priests are all basically interacting with people all the time. the distance is zero. doctors (that are any good) are not. similarly, programmers are not (google's "do no evil").

this of course assumes the convention is any good.
but that seems to be the defense case / essence case.

Anonymous said...

Well originally this was Hypocrates ad campaign to say "Hey, I won't poison you like those other doctors." Its like that Norm McDonald standup where he says "If I was a priest I'd have a TV ad saying, Hi I'm Father McDonald, come down to my church and I promise you I won't fuck your kids." This is in the video where a teacher is heckling him and he roasts her.

Alrenous said...

Now imagine a church unironically swore not to diddle the kids. Then imagine it's thousands of years later, all churches are still swearing that, and the pedophilia/gay conversion abuse rates haven't gone anywhere. 7% or so, I'm told.

Anonymous said...

Gell-Mann amnesia: "Alrenous is talking out of his ass, again.
Am I gonna keep reading and trust him next time?
Sure. It's great reading"

That's not part of the Hippo Oath.
Nobody uses that oath anymore. The new oaths don't mention that.
For the most part the principle is there is to keep you from falling prey to the patient's or their family's demands that you keep cutting or pumping them full of whatever to the bitter end hoping for a miracle. Believe me, docs restrain themselves way better than your average plumber/architect/engineer trying to fix the stupid cardboard house, if only because the penalties are stiffer. Plumber comes and you just hope he didn't break anything else.
Cops do swear an oath not to mug you; in most countries they fail even that. Architects swear an oath too, afaik. God knows who else.
Toasters not exploding and soda not poisoning you (too much) are just a post-WW2 managerial state thing. Before that everyone else knew that making purchases was basically putting your life into your own hands.

Alrenous said...

My condolences on your cognitive deficiencies and/or devotion to self-hatred.

>Before that everyone else knew that making purchases was basically putting your life into your own hands.

Oh I see, you're a Satanist. All hail the arch-traitor.
I have the right enemies, as per usual. You read because it hurts and you hate yourself, so, working as intended.

Anonymous said...

All hail indeed.

Only people with cognitive deficiencies read Alrenous. Got it.

Basic trust in the toaster, coke, cop or bricklayer, such as it is, is an achievement of your black government, not an inherent quality of any of them. Basic trust in doctors came along at the same time. "First do no harm" is an outdated pop culture device, along with the whole oath thing, not a principle of ethics. You're basically arguing with TV Tropes. At best it's an implicit appeal to authority used so Mom, brain stewed in Grey's Anatomy, will finally consent to letting Grandpa die.

Does society presume engineers, architects and firefighters inherently want to do harm? I know they swear too.

Alrenous said...

Self-hater: "It hurts! This is great, come, suffer with me!" They assume you, too, hate yourself, and wish to spread the joy of self-abnegation.

Bolts of self-hatred are harmless to everyone except the caster.