By Dr. Marilyn M. Singleton, America Out Loud - Written in about 400 B.C., the Oath of Hippocrates embodies the guiding ethical principles of the practice of medicine. The Oath focuses on individual physicians treating their individual patients. All of our actions must be for the benefit of the patient; we must keep all of their information — “holy secrets,” as the Oath states — confidential. Our duties attach whether the patients were “free or slaves.” If we actually paid attention to these principles, we would not need Big Brother’s rules.