Commentary
For the past 20 years, medical practitioners (nurses and doctors) were ranked the most trusted professions by the Gallup Honesty and Ethics poll. When a patient visits a doctor, he or she can assume that the doctor will only consider treatments benefiting the patient. This is because hundreds of years of medical practice have established a tradition of trust in which the patient believes that the doctor adheres to the ancient Hippocratic Oath (first do no harm) and the modern-day Declaration of Geneva, the ethics of medical practice published by the World Medical Association.
