UConn DEI-ifies the Hippocratic Oath

The Hippocratic Oath has for two millennia served as the foundational pillar of medicine in Western civilization. The oath binds physicians to a commitment to “do no harm,” to help the sick, and to various other ethical principles.

But according to the University of Connecticut (UConn) School of Medicine, the oath should also be a pledge to advance DEI in medicine.

UConn in 2022 announced plans to transform its version of the Hippocratic Oath into not only an oath, but a commitment to radical political ideology. The change was prompted by the university’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.

“We have revised our medical school’s Hippocratic oath to include active pledges to identify and mitigate personal biases, to uphold human rights, to respond to medical myths with evidenced based information and without judgment, to actively support policies that promote social justice and specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination, and racism,” UConn’s announcement read.

Do No Harm obtained a copy of UConn’s 2024 Hippocratic Oath used in the school’s White Coat Ceremony for the class of 2028. A commitment to “do no harm” is conspicuously absent; in fact, the word “harm” does not appear at all.

Instead, the document is replete with references to political ideology: “I will work actively to identify and mitigate my own biases so as to treat all patients and coworkers with humility and dignity”; “I will strive to promote health equity”; “I will actively support policies that promote social justice and specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination and racism.”

Not only does UConn’s oath eschew one of the fundamental ethical principles of Western medicine, it promotes ideas that are directly opposed to the oath’s principles. 

“Health equity” and “social justice” are often euphemisms for racially discriminatory policies that disadvantage certain racial groups in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. These policies directly harm patients, physicians, and the public alike.

When it comes to the development of medical expertise and the practice of medicine outside these goals, UConn’s oath has comparatively little to say. Almost half the oath is instead devoted to larger social goals, such as the promotion of “human life” and “human rights.”

Unfortunately, UConn is not alone; the University of Minnesota Medical School asked its medical students to swear allegiance to “indigenous ways of healing,” with the oath referencing anti-racism and climate advocacy. Columbia University’s medical students wrote their own Hippocratic Oaths.

Medical schools should not stray from the core principle of “do no harm”; it is the foundation of Western medical ethics. Altering the Hippocratic Oath to replace this commitment with one to a dangerous political ideology is antithetical to the purpose of medicine itself.