Op-Ed: The AMA’s Apology

July 24, 2008

The apology, published in the July 16 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, invokes the moral doctrine of practicing physicians — as depicted in the Hippocratic oath and the prayer of Maimonides, statements recited by new medical graduates — to heal their patients regardless of personal traits. Along with the association’s own Code of Medical Ethics, these principles serve to compel physicians to treat each other and their patients without prejudice, the association’s immediate past president, Dr. Ronald Davis, argued in the written apology. “In this regard the AMA failed, across the span of a century, to live up to the high standards that define the noble profession of medicine,” he wrote. (New York Sun)