Ripensare il Giuramento di Ippocrate: un confronto con Peter Singer

This work arises from a preliminary question. In fact, I asked if we still consider valid the Hippocratic Oath. From a certain point of view, the answer seems so, because its statements and ethical conduct, such as the consecration of the doctor's life to the service of humanity, responsibility towards the patient, professional secrecy, corporatism, prudence, virtues, values, anti-abortionists, have continued in an almost unchanged to this day, at least in an abstract and formal. However, from another point of view we must instead ask whether the statements and ethical conduct of the Hippocratic Oath is still applicable to those which can be considered the real problems of contemporary medicine. Problems, as is well known, which are closely related to the current scientific and technological progress, as well as legal, in the field of abortion, euthanasia, and in all the other areas that still the Hippocratic Oath not contemplated and that obviously could not contemplate. The meter of comparison I used to assess whether the Hippocratic Oath is still relevant today are the theses proposed by the philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer Australian in Rethinking Life and Death, in which he seeks to dismantle the 'old commandments "ethical system Hippocratic ethics-type-religious proposing "new commandments" instead take account of new medical techniques, the legal judgments of typical cases, and changing public opinion, ie that socio-cultural change that is affecting more and more bully our contemporary world.