Letter: The oath doctors don't take

Sir: The Hippocratic Oath (letters, 2 April) is well known among doctors, and a copy hangs on the wall of the medical school where I graduated in the 1950s. But I was never asked to take the oath, and suspect that this is true of many and possibly most other doctors in this country.

More important, medical students are unlikely to derive their ethical principles from an oath, whether ancient or modern. They get them from their families, their teachers, their peers and their own experience, with a little practical advice from the General Medical Council thrown in for good measure.

Professor PETER J SCHEUER

London NW11