Mock trial in Lausanne –
Hippocrates left the court of Beaulieu a free man
The Rumine Disputes Prosecutor’s Office accused the father of medicine of having failed in his duty of assistance or education towards his children, the doctors.
Published today at 4:30 p.m.
The illustration of the trial is a proposal from Justine Margueron, illustration student at HEAD-Geneva.
Justine Margueron
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- Hippocrates was symbolically represented by the doctor and ethicist Bertrand Kiefer.
- The trial debated the ethical evolution of medicine.
- The contradiction between the pursuit of profit and medical ethics was discussed.
This Saturday evening, the Beaulieu Criminal Court placed a 2,430-year-old man in the dock: Hippocrates. “You are rather used to people bowing to your toga, to having your buskins waxed… But today, we are judging you”, declaimed in the introduction Béatrice Schaad, director of the Center on Relations between patients, relatives and professionals at the CHUV and professor at the University of Lausanne.
The court was composed of the President Miriam Mazou and the public functioning as a jury. The chair of the Public Prosecutor’s Office was occupied by the prosecutor, Mr.e Michael Stauffacher. In defense, Me Melissa Elkaïm. The accused, Hippocrates, was played by the doctor and ethicist Bertrand Kiefer.
“The accused is suspected of having been guilty of violating the duty of assistance or education,” said the president, Miriam Mazou. Hippocrates, founder of the ethical principles of medicine, is accused of not having followed his own teachings, of having abandoned his children, i.e. the doctors who succeeded him. This negligence would have led to abuses among certain doctorsthey are more interested in the economic and technological aspects of their activity than in their patients.
Invited to speak at the bar, Bertrand “Hippocrate” Kiefer clarified the foundations of his oath: “It is a school, a group of people who brought a thought to the surface.” By removing the medical practice of the time from charlatanism and religion, and by affirming that the disease is not of divine but of human origin. “This ethics, this rationality has marked the history of humanity and built medicine.”
Many patients at the center
“Were the search for profit and questions of profitability part of your values?”, asked the accused Me Stauffacher. “No, I promoted a philosophy that put the good of patients at the center, without harming them, while respecting them.”
M’s turne Elkaim to question his client. “Do you think that the evolution of society has corrupted medicine?” “Society itself is caught in an incredible movement of progress and consumption. We no longer know where health, illness, the increase in bodies is found. This throws enormous trouble into medicine, into its ancient goals.”
The witnesses then followed one another. The historian of medicine Vincent Barras first sowed doubt: does the accused exist? “Hippocrates is a largely mythical character. It exists in the way we built it.” Adding, like the Sphinx: “God exists, since we believe in him.”
The question was also whether patients were partly responsible for the current excesses. “Are they victims or are they putting health professionals under pressure?” asked the president. “We are all a bunch of hypochondriacs!” retorted the prosecution’s witness, Sophie Michaud Gigon, director of the Fédération romande des consommateurs (FRC) and national councilor for Vaud. Before stating: “Medicine today is a system which contributes to the increase in GDP in Switzerland.”
Remuneration and prevention
It was then the turn of Sandy Estermann, general practitioner and defense witness, to answer Ms.e Stauffacher regarding the supposedly high remuneration of doctors. “When I am called for a heart attack at home on a Sunday afternoon, I am paid less than the locksmith who opens the door.”
Also called to the stand, her colleague Johanna Sommer recalled a blind spot in remuneration: prevention. “Switzerland is the country that does the least prevention in the world. It’s still incredible! We, family doctors, advise our patients who smoke, eat poorly or do not move on a daily basis to change their habits. But we are not paid to do it!”
Prosecutor Me Stauffacher pleaded for a two-year custodial sentence with a full suspension. “It would be stupid to detain the only person who can get us out of trouble. This sentence must be combined with a probation period of 20 years. To allow the accused to put humanist, disinterested and independent medicine back on track.” “My client is held responsible for the excesses of his children,” retorted M.e Melissa Elkaim. Let us instead recognize their merits: making the paralyzed walk again, making the hearing impaired hear, restoring sight to the blind.”
At the end of the pleadings, the popular jury voted: the Beaulieu Criminal Court acquitted Hippocrates of the charge of violation of the duty of assistance and education.
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