Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Ethics

  • Informed choice versus informed consent

    George L. SpaethPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, USA Before initiating an action that may harm a patient, it is customary to obtain informed consent, with the generally accepted purpose of respecting the patient’s autonomy and protecting the person initiating the action: “Obtaining patients’ consent . . . demonstrates respect for patient autonomy and should help prevent legal action…

  • Confidentiality and privacy in public hospitals

    David O. IraborIbadan, Nigeria In Africa, as elsewhere in the world, healthcare professionals are bound by ethical codes not to disclose information given to them by their patients. Yet despite the best of efforts, neither confidentiality nor privacy can always be easily guaranteed, as exemplified by a look at problems encountered at a public hospital…

  • A reflection on the authority gained through tradition: How implementing the Hippocratic Oath in medical school commencement helped legitimize the modern American medical profession

    Chloé M. DeLisleColombia The taking of the Hippocratic Oath is an oral tradition that encourages the participants to feel a continued commitment to a professional set of values and ethics.1 By invoking the gods it also creates a divine link, reinforcing the physicians’ responsibility to uphold a sacred tradition and binding them to each other…

  • Aristotelian gender bias in modern depictions of fertilization

    Brit TrogenNew York, New York In 1991, anthropologist Emily Martin argued that accounts of human fertilization in medical textbooks often applied gendered language and stereotypes to anthropomorphized representations of the sperm and egg.1 “Masculine” sperm were depicted as strong adventurers, heroes, and conquerors, actively swimming towards the egg and “penetrating” its defenses.1 “Feminine” oocytes, on…

  • Another look at Hippocrates

    Aroop MangalikNew Mexico, Albuquerque, USA From my early years in medical school, I recall the reverence with which my teachers talked about Hippocrates. The great Indian physicians, Charaka and Shushruta, who worked and wrote several hundred years before Hippocrates, were mentioned only in passing. The Hippocratic Ethics, the Hippocratic Oath, and the clinical observations made…

  • Is there a united Hippocratic school?

    Adil MenonChicago, Illinois, United States Hippocrates once asserted that while “many admire, few know,” a truth that would come to cast a long shadow over his own legacy. Eager to connect themselves to a famous name, if not to the practices or ideology he espoused, a multitude of schools across the ancient Greek world have hailed…