Ben Smith Interviews Someone Nasty

Krauthammer on torture and the Hippocratic Oath

One portion of my conversation with Krauthammer that wasn't quite on topic for my story about him, but which interested me, concerned his defense of Bush's interrogation policies.

I asked, in particular, his views, as a medical doctor, on whether doctors and psychiatrists who have sworn the Hippocratic Oath can participate, one focus of critics inside and outside medicine.

He answered a narrower question some critics have raised about torture: Should doctors, like him, have participated in those interrogations, despite swearing an oath to “first, do no harm” to patients?

The Hippocratic Oath is “an easy thing to throw around,” he responded, noting that it also bans abortion and assisted suicide.
“My judgment on the morality of what they did would be no different from my judgment on the morality of those who carried out, those who ordered it, those who gave the legal opinions defending it, and those who tacitly or overtly approved it,” he said.