For most people Hippocrates is a shadowy figure somehow connected to the ethical practice of medicine; they feel vaguely comforted by the supposed fact that doctors take a Hippocratic Oath of practice upon graduation. The truth is that very few take the Oath of Hippocrates; some take a revisionist version, which retains the name but removes the content; many make no commitment to rigorously defined ethical standards. There are many bio-ethicists who argue that the Oath of Hippocrates is irrelevant to our society for reasons which I will make plain shortly.
