TY - JOUR T1 - Euthanasia, ethics, and the Gordian Knot: is the Hippocratic Code obsolete? JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 624 LP - 625 DO - 10.3399/bjgp15X687721 VL - 65 IS - 641 AU - Patrick McEvoy Y1 - 2015/12/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/65/641/624.abstract N2 - ‘Controversy pervades the contemporary debate over the moral and legal status of euthanasia.’(Craig Patterson, moral philosopher)1Euthanasia is increasingly advocated in public discourse as a humane response to terminal prognosis and distress on the part of selected patients, and their carers. Emotive arguments, mostly concerning individual extreme cases, are challenging the established ethic that forbids doctors prematurely ending human life. Utilitarian thinking, emphasising autonomy and pragmatism, is influential on public opinion and this may resonate with doctors who wish to do their best for their patients. However, a recent UK parliamentary debate roundly rejected a Bill proposing medically-assisted suicide, but pressures that favour this will not disappear.2The special value accorded to life and prohibition against the involvement of doctors in ending it are codified since Hippocrates. The Hippocratic code probably represented the pre-existing best practice of the age, not just the sage himself, and ascribed to the legendary physician of Kos probably because he represented the higher ideals. This may be seen as a primordial and enduring expression of the natural law tradition. Physicians, then as now, had to be reminded to curb their instincts to cut through conflicting issues in tough cases by applying utilitarian measures. The validity of natural law has been proposed in every age up to the Enlightenment and since, from Aristotle, through the Roman Stoics, Aquinas, Rousseau, and Locke, to the US Declaration of Independence, and has influenced the Declaration of Human Rights and common law.3 Compared with such pedigree, utilitarian modernism is a relative newcomer.The Enlightenment itself was built on centuries of development of European philosophy that argued its issues, not from theology but from reason, dredging the accessible, antecedent philosophies to seek universals that … ER -