In the wake of the Holocaust and disclosure of the role that physicians played in the carnage, society turned to the law to bridge that ethical gap. Thus, the Geneva Convention and the Nuremberg Code, with their emphasis on the rights of individuals and autonomy, supplanted the Hippocratic tradition. Today the debate over physician beneficence and patient autonomy is carried out in the courts. As the elderly, infirm, and the terminally ill struggle to maintain control over their lives, they come to realize that at some level we are all dependent on others. The ethical principle of beneficence requires a benefactor.
Autonomy is neither truly autonomous nor wholly automatic.
Above all, do no harm Today, not only the American Medical Association but also the American Nurses Association continue to stand officially opposed to assisted death as a violation of the professional ethic. Similarly, the Hippocratic cult of medicine deposed the sorcerer and separated the power to kill from the power to cure. In accepting this separation, Hippocratic healers defied the norms and ethics of their times. But surveys of individual nurses and doctors today show an increasing erosion of consensus. Some nurses admit privately or in anonymous surveys that they have hastened patient demise, even in the absence of patient consent or family demand.