Where it comes from:
Not really:
"In a 2000 survey of US medical schools, all of the then extant medical schools administered some type of profession oath. Among schools of modern medicine, sixty-two of 122 used the Hippocratic Oath, or a modified version of it."
Like I said in my previous post, some schools use a modern rendition. The modern versions don't forbid surgery, the use of poison, abortive measures, or compensation for medical training--necessary features of modern healthcare.
I challenge you to find me one med school that uses the original oath.
Medical ethics these days follows a principle-based system. The most common framework employs four basic moral principles: respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. The current system of ethics is far more robust than any of the pledges taken. The pledges are more about personal significance and have no legal or procedural weight.
Obviously it's net harm, not no harm at all.
Medical ethics is its own field precisely because overeager and overconfident solutions are fraught with problems.
But what about if somebody donates a kidney...? Hm
> It is often said that the phrase "First do no harm" (Latin: Primum non nocere) is a part of the Hippocratic oath. The phrase as such does not appear in the oath...