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Achieving Racial Harmony for the Benefit of Patients and CommunitiesContrition, Reconciliation, and Collaboration
Ronald M. Davis, MD
JAMA. 2008;300(3):323-325. Published online July 10, 2008 (doi:10.1001/jama.300.3.323).
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Physicians have long been members of a special moral community. They have sworn to uphold ethical principles that, in the case of the Hippocratic oath, date back to the fourth century BC.
Several proclamations that undergird the medical profession speak to the primacy of equality. The "Prayer of Maimonides,"1-2 which first appeared in print in 1783 and is recited by many new medical graduates,3 asks God to preserve the strength of the physician's body and soul so that "they ever be ready to cheerfully help and support rich and poor, good and bad, enemy as well as friend. In the sufferer let me see only the human being."1
The first Code of Medical Ethics of the American Medical Association (AMA), adopted in 1847 (the year the AMA was founded), was introduced with a statement on equity, noting that physicians use "zealous and methodical efforts for . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Author Affiliations: Immediate Past President, American Medical Association, Chicago, Illinois; Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, Michigan.
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African American Physicians and Organized Medicine, 1846-1968: Origins of a Racial Divide
Robert B. Baker, Harriet A. Washington, Ololade Olakanmi, Todd L. Savitt, Elizabeth A. Jacobs, Eddie Hoover, and Matthew K. Wynia
JAMA. 2008;300(3):306-313.
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