Most all doctors, and other healthcare professionals take the Hippocratic oath. This oath has a long history and you can read more about it over here in Wikipedia, or search it out on your own for more info. I want to make a few points about this oath.
Marijuana has been used as medicine for longer than the origins of this oath, and I would bet that of all the physicians who have taken this oath throughout history, the number of them who have not and will not prescribe or condone the use of marijuana in any form, are a very small fraction of the whole. Ahh…modern medicine! They have left a lot behind over the years. Considering all the modern research, I’m finding it hard to believe that many doctors take this oath very seriously. I feel for these doctors, really. They have been as misled as anyone. Read the Hippocratic oath and see how many contradictions there are to the way modern medicine is practiced in the US today.
Hippocratic Oath
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
—Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University
I find it odd that the word hypocrite, hypocritical and hypocrisy all sound so similar. What is your take on this? My take, in my present state of mind of being fed up with most of the modern medicine community, is that not standing up for the use of marijuana as a curative and preventative medicine, or at very least not looking into the most recent research, is in violation of nearly every point in this oath. Tell me what you feel about it.