Silence of the Sheep.

• Author: Amerling, Richard

AMERICAN MEDICINE has become unmoored from its scientific and ethical anchors, abandoning real science for the pseudoscientific cult of evidence-based medicine. This grave error paved the way for the medical tyranny we currently are enduring, with no apparent end in sight--but the wholesale abandonment of medical ethics is an even more serious problem. After all, ethics predate our scientific understanding of medicine by millennia. Ethics are based on morality, not legality. Morality and legality are not interchangeable. We should not be able to redefine ethics to accommodate current law or fads. Otherwise, medicine quickly becomes a tool of the state.

The Oath of Hippocrates remains the purest expression of medical ethics, and I encourage all to review it. Note that the precise wording "primum non nocere" or "first do no harm," a core ethical principle attributed by some to Hippocrates, is not in the Oath, but the concept is there, along with the duty to teach and to honor one's teachers, to consult learned colleagues, to devote one's attention and art to the patient, to keep confidentiality, to respect life, and specifically never to kill, either via euthanasia or abortion. There is not a word in the Oath about following guidelines and protocols. It is no wonder the Oath has been revised, disrespected, or ignored by the unethical elites who dominate medicine. The modern practice of medicine would leave Hippocrates appalled.

I am a witness to the degradation of medicine; it largely was self-inflicted. Perhaps the first step down the slippery slope was the surrender, without so much as a whimper, of medical confidentiality. Agreeing to provide confidential patient information to the various third-party payers was a gross violation of medical ethics. Accepting third-party payment is itself unethical, as it can create conflicts of interest that diminish allegiance to the patient. Direct payment is the only truly ethical system of physician compensation. We need to reestablish confidentiality at the same level as the lawyer-client, pastor-parishioner, and journalistsource relationships.

Abortion is the killing of a human being in utero. It clearly is unethical and immoral. Legalization of abortion should not have impacted the ethical prohibition...