What is most debated about Hippocrates today in the medical field?

Question

or in his medical findings
or what are the most important debate subjects debated today

Answer 1

I would have to say probably the ethics involved in Euthanasia. In the classic Hippocratic Oath it says not to harm your patient, but there are always circumstances which make things different.

Answer 2

Debate and controversy are actually beneficial in the field of medicine. We have had both since the time of Hippocrates.

It's hard to bring new knowledge and practices into the medical sphere. Since you are dealing with human lives and human emotions change is slow. The scientific method is always favored.

One important debate that has been ongoing since Hippocrates practiced is the question of surgery. Is it needed? If so, why? When? How?

This kind of fits into the "do no harm to your patient" ethic that Hippocrates stressed.

You've got some doctors who are very hesitant to recommend surgery and see it as a last resort. On the other end of the spectrum you have doctors killing babies by ripping them out with vaccum suction. They will tell you they are performing a surgery for the good of the patient.

Answer 3

If the Hippocratic Oath is generally taken as "a physician shall do no harm" (which is a gross oversimplification - see link below), then one fierce debate today involves the morality of euthanasia.

Generally, we think of death (as well as killing and letting die) as a bad thing. But for terminally-ill patients in chronic pain, who would be better off dead, death seems to be a benefit.

But philosophically...a benefit to whom?? Once someone is dead, that person ceases to exist, so *that* person couldn't have been benefited. The litmus test, one theory goes, is that for something to be a benefit or a harm, you have to be able to compare two states: the welfare of the person before and after the event/act in question. There is no post-death person because, by definition, the person no longer exists.

This is the same reason why some people don't think causing someone to be born is a benefit (or harm) to that person...there is no pre-birth person. So the related debate here is abortion.