Otis Brawley is one of America's truly outstanding physician scientists. In How We Do Harm, he challenges all of us-- physicians, patients, and communities-- to recommit ourselves to the pledge to 'do no harm.'
The Physitian owes all to the patient, but the patient owes nothing to him but a little mony.
All of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care.
No doctor takes pleasure in the health even of his friends.
I always knew I wanted to be a doctor, but I also knew that being a doctor meant more than treating just the patient in front of you.
I don't look for anybody to pay for health care for me and my family. That's my responsibility.
The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm.
We can no longer remain within our exam rooms and ignore what happens in our communities. As physicians and dentists, we must have a presence in both places. Our sacred responsibility is both to help the patient in front of us and also to safeguard the health of the nation.
On the day I swore to uphold the Hippocratic oath, the small hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I waited for lightning to strike. Who was I, vowing calmly among all these necktied young men to steal life out of nature's jaws, every old time we got half a chance and a paycheck?... I could not accept the contract: that every child born human upon this earth comes with a guarantee of perfect health and old age clutched in its small fist.
