Petition to Portuguese Medical Association

To: Bastonário of the Medical Association

His Excellency

Bastonário of the Medical Association

Honored Colleague,

The signatories of this petition come, as your colleagues, to intercede vehemently with Your Excellency to request that you maintain with the greatest rigor and commitment the intransigent struggle for the ethical independence and autonomy of the medical profession, resisting the deformation of its Code of Ethics imposed from outside.

We are aware of the misuse of medical knowledge that various powers and pressure groups have attempted and continue to attempt to accomplish.

We recall innumerable examples of abusive uses of medical knowledge for purposes opposed to human dignity, many of them having occurred in recent times.

We recall participation in torture, the establishment and execution of the death penalty, forced internments in psychiatric institutions, sterilizations, and eliminations of human beings for eugenic or racist reasons, etc.

We recall also that some of the darkest examples of the use of medical knowledge for purposes that are alien to the nature of the profession were put into use by democratically elected regimes.

We do not accept, therefore, the subjection of this Code to a changing "ethic", molded to the taste of the interests, conveniences, ideologies or convictions of those who happen to have power or influence at the time.

We are fully aware that these detours only make it more important to reaffirm a stable and firm ethical code, with which has been confirmed by the Hippocratic Oath for more than 2,500 years.

The essence and the sense of Medicine does not reside in the knowledge and skill with which we master the techniques and instruments inherent in our activity, to a service in which the objectives don't matter. It resides, rather, in the service of human beings, through the promotion of health, the struggle against disease and against the threats that it poses to human life, guaranteeing to those who procure our services and trust in us the prolongation of life and the struggle against suffering.

The knowledge and the methods that characterize our profession exist to serve these purposes, and the Association should protect the proper use of them..

We have now manifested to Your Excellency the greatest support for resisting the arrogance with which the political power seeks to manipulate and alter the Code of Ethics of the Medical Association.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

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[01/03/2008]

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