Codes, oaths and prayers guiding health practitioners in caring for patients have been extant for centuries. Codes of ethics have been expressed in the form of prayers, oaths, creeds, institutional directives, and statements.
"Prayers state a very personal commitment of duty; oaths publicly pledge the oath taker to uphold specified responsibilities; and codes provide more comprehensive standards to guide the practicing health practitioner, patient, or other decision maker. Each form of ethical statement implies a moral imperative, either to be accepted by the individual personally or to be enforced by a practitioner organization, religious community, or governmental body." (Veatch, Robert. 1995. "Medical Codes and Oaths" in vol. 1,pp. 1419-1435, Encyclopedia of Bioethics. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan : Simon & Schuster Macmillan ; Prentice Hall International.
One of the earliest oaths is one for medical students taken from the Charaka Samhita manuscript of ancient India. This oath called upon the student to follow a path of personal sacrifice and commitment to duty.
In western Medicine, the Hippocratic Oath has had great influence. The Oath of Asaf, from a seventh-century Hebrew medical manuscript, reveals Hippocratic influences in its injunctions against administering poisons or abortifacient drugs, performing surgery, committing adultery, and betraying practitioner confidences.
In China, medical ethics appear in the Taoist writer Sun Szu-miao, whose writing stresses the importance of preserving life and serving the interests of the patient. The most widely known Jewish text is the Daily Prayer of a Physician, once ascribed to the Jewish philosopher and phyisician Moses Maimonides (1135-1204).
American Medical Association (AMA) Code of Ethics
The AMA Code of Ethics was adapted from the ethical code of conduct published in 1794 by Thomas Percival. This was the first code to be adopted by a national professional organization.
Declaration of Geneva (1948 - rev. 2002)
This oath for physicians was adopted by the newly established (1948) World Medical Association largely in response the atrocities committed in the name of research in WWII Nazi concentration camps. It was also meant to update the Hippocratic Oath to make it more applicable to the modern era.
Declaration of Helsinki
This document has been revised several times since its publication in 1964 as a response to unethical medical experiments of the Nazis during WWII. The latest revision of the declaration (2000) states that "the well-being of the human subject should take precedence over the interest of science and society."
Nuremberg Code (1947)
The Nuremberg Military Tribunal's decision in the case of the United States v Karl Brandt et al. includes what is now called the Nuremberg Code, a ten point statement delimiting permissible medical experimentation on human subjects.
Moses Maimonides (1135/38-1204) was the most important Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages. Maimonides was born in the Spanish city of Cordoba but later fled with his family to Fustat (now Cairo) because of rising anti-Semitism in Spain. There Maimonides worked as a physician, but also became a scholar of Jewish law and a philosopher.
Thomas Percival. Medical Ethics. (1803)
The English physician, Thomas Percival (1740-1804) in 1803 published his Medical Ethics; or, a Code of Institutes and Precepts Adapted to the Professional Conduct of Physicians and Surgeons. This code, following in the tradition of the Hippocratic Oath was to influence the development of later codes of medical ethics.
World Medical Association International Code of Medical Ethics (1949)
This was an attempt to develop international standards of medical ethics and sought to summarize the most important principles of medical ethics.
Instruction on Respect for Human Life (1987)
The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith makes known its stance concerning "biomedical techniques which make it possible to intervene in the initial phase of the life of a human being and in the very processes of procreation and their conformity with the principles of Catholic morality."