Category: Professional ethics, oaths, and pledges (ethics). Each language text below is one published, write-once file; the CID is computed over its exact bytes and is what an IFP-21 citation pins.
Restatement per IFP-22 Section 2.3. The Declaration is copyrighted by the World Medical Association; this entry is the registry's own prose describing what the pledge holds, as of the accessed date. A declaration citing this entry is a declaration of the oath as restated here.
The Declaration of Geneva is the World Medical Association's modern successor to the Hippocratic Oath: a short first-person pledge taken by physicians, first adopted at Geneva in 1948 in direct response to the medical crimes of the Second World War, and most recently amended in October 2017. The WMA publishes the authoritative text at the source URL; what follows describes, in this registry's own words, what the pledge commits its taker to.
The physician opens by dedicating their life to the service of humanity, and promises that the patient's health and well-being come first. The 2017 amendment made two commitments explicit that earlier versions lacked: respect for the patient's autonomy and dignity, and — strikingly — a duty of self-care, the physician undertaking to attend to their own health and abilities so that their care of others does not degrade.
The pledge continues through a sequence of undertakings: to hold human life in the utmost respect; to refuse to let age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing, or any comparable factor come between the physician's duty and their patient; to keep the patient's confidences, even after the patient has died; to practice with conscience, dignity, and good medical practice; to sustain the honor and traditions of the profession; to give teachers, colleagues, and students the respect and gratitude due them; and to share medical knowledge for the benefit of patients and the advancement of care.
It closes with a boundary on the profession's power: the physician swears not to use medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat — and makes all of these promises solemnly, freely, and upon their honor.
This restatement was prepared from the instrument as published at the source URL, read as of the accessed date. If the WMA further amends the Declaration, or objects to this characterization, the correction will appear as a new superseding version; this version remains published because citations to it remain outstanding (IFP-22, Sections 2.3 and 4).