The Revised Declaration of Geneva

As the contemporary successor to the 2500-year-old Hippocratic Oath, the Declaration of Geneva, which was adopted by the World Medical Association (WMA) at its second General Assembly in 1948,1 outlines in concise terms the professional duties of physicians and affirms the ethical principles of the global medical profession. The current version of the Declaration, which had to this point been amended only minimally in the nearly 70 years since its adoption, addresses a number of key ethical parameters relating to the patientphysician relationship, medical confidentiality, respect for teachers and colleagues, and other issues. A newly revised version adopted by the WMA General Assembly on October 14, 2017, includes several important changes and additions (Supplement). It is standard practice for the WMA to circulate its policy papers for review every 10 years to reevaluate the accuracy, essentiality, and relevance of the documents. The Declaration of Geneva is no exception. In 2016 (10 years following the most recent editorial revision of the Declaration), the WMA established an international workgroup to assess the Declaration of Geneva’s content, structure, audience, and implementation and to determine whether any amendments were necessary. Given the crucial nature of this document, the assigned workgroup charted a generous timeline of nearly 2 years to allow ample opportunity to gather feedback and suggestions not only from member national medical associations, but also from external experts. The goal in doing so was to ensure that the revision was as transparent and collaborative an effort as possible. Chaired by the German Medical Association and composed of workgroup members of different cultural, religious, and racial backgrounds, the workgroup tasked with determining the need for a revision carefully considered the Declaration in light of modern developments in medicine and medical ethics, as well as in the context of other important WMA policies and respected international literature. The workgroup also based its recommendations on comments solicited from WMA members on several occasions (most recently in July and August 2017), as well as a 3-week public consultation carried out in May and June 2017, during which the draft version of the revised Declaration was published on the WMA website and distributed to an international network of experts and stakeholders for comment. Each comment received over the course of the revision process was carefully reviewed VIEWPOINT