First Do No Harm: Part 2, The Rant
In a previous article, I suggested that First Do No Harm, is a useful approach to living. I delineated the primary aspects of this axiom and presented some examples from the Web of organizations that abide by or at least acknowledge the rule of First Do No Harm or in Latin Primum Non Nocere.
In that essay, I also related this precept, associated with the medical doctor's Hippocratic Oath, to the worlds of teaching and organic farming as illustrations of taking pains to be sure that one's actions--however well-meaning--do as little harm as possible to our children or the Earth.
However, I feel the need to further expand upon this principle and its application in various fields of human endeavor. Having mulled this truism over, and realizing that mere words--however high sounding and well-wrought--never offer a perfect solution to life's complex situations, I offer the following list of areas of society that I feel could profit from following this ancient maxim:
Programming: Should programmers write applications that damage body, spirit or mind? For example, there are applications that are used to peer into our private lives as well as spy on entire nations. Some programs invade our consciousness (especially children) with gratuitous violence, such as certain video games.
Health Care: Many of us feel that medical doctors should spend more time talking with their patients and taking more extensive patient histories instead of relying too heavily on modern diagnostic equipment. During the last few years I have had to change health insurance providers several times. I have been appalled at how skimpy the patient questionnaires are that I am asked to fill out, how little physicians or assistants ask probing questions and how hard it is to transfer medical records from one provider to another.
In my opinion also, practitioners of allopathic medicine (modern western medicine) are far too quick to promote invasive procedures as cures when all to often symptoms and pain are traded for side effects. First do no harm by considering that the body heals itself. Perhaps physicians should consider the model of the "midwife," a person who attends and helps the birth of a child rather than the authoritarian magician dispensing magic pills based on arcane knowledge and mysterious equipment. Of course, I do not mean to denigrate the many caring members of the medical profession, and some of the advances of modern medicine, especially where critical intervention is needed.
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