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Patient autonomy is paramount to the oath that we take when we enter the profession of medicine. That is why I am appalled when the federal government gets between my patients and their right to the full range of medical information and complete access to health care.

When I took the Hippocratic oath and was effectively 'sworn in' as a doctor, I took the same vow that doctors have taken for generations. Patient autonomy is core to this oath.

If I'm at the front line and refuse to treat a patient, it's considered a crime. As a physician, this is my oath. I'm going to treat everyone regardless.

Though moral axioms to guide the conduct of the practitioner have existed since the beginnings of the profession of healing, Western doctors are most likely to view the Hippocratic Oath of approximately two-and-a-half millennia ago as the first codified set of statements to which they can look for guidance.

There are doctors who help people who have done bad things; there are lawyers who defend bad people. I don't think it's unique to my profession.

Whether it's possible or not, being a doctor, you take an oath. To care for your patient, not to kill them. You take an oath to do things that are proper in the medical world. Not to administer something outside of a hospital setting that's not even your area.

We can trust our doctors to be professional, to minister equally to their patients without regard to their political or religious beliefs. But we can no longer trust our professors to do the same.

Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients.

In the last analysis, of course, an oath will encourage fidelity in office only to the degree that officeholders continue to believe that they cannot escape ultimate accountability for a breach of faith.