Dr. Farr Curlin aligned with fellow U.S. physicians over the past several years to form The Hippocratic Society, a group aiming to restore moral formation and conscientious clinical judgment as cherished ideals in practising good medicine.

When the Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, presents at the Canadian Physicians for Life annual conference in Vancouver Oct. 25-27, he will invite his northern neighbours to join this cause.

“If they long to practise medicine with integrity and they feel helpless in the face of so many forces that seem to reduce it to just providing services to serve goals that may not even be morally legitimate then they are not alone,” said Curlin. “There is an opportunity now to join and grow an association of medical practitioners committed to healing and renewing our profession.”

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Appraising the medical landscape in Canada, Curlin, who has served as a hospice and palliative physician, said the Canadian assisted suicide regime, now well-documented as the fastest-growing in the world, is a striking example of a degrading force.

“I think it is tragic what is happening in Canada,” said Curlin. “It reflects that if as a profession we understand ourselves just to be providers of services put to use to bring about what patients desire, pretty soon we are providing death. This undermines and corrupts a profession that should be devoted strictly to healing.”

Curlin will invite Canadian medical schools, hospitals and other entities to form new chapters of The Hippocratic Society during the conference banquet on Oct. 26.  Ewan Goligher, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, will be discussant.

To clarify, while Canadian groups can express their intent to join The Hippocratic Society now, their branch is more likely to be authorized in 2025 as the society has largely devoted 2024 to building its “culture, practices and materials,” said Curlin.

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There are eight Hippocratic Society chapters and two undergraduate divisions recognized on the organization’s website (hippsoc.org), with a handful poised to receive authorization later this autumn. Harvard, Duke, Stanford and Washington are among the noteworthy universities.

Originally, the organization was known as the Hippocratic Forum. Thanks to a grant from the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education, the participating physicians launched a series of podcasts and began mentoring medical trainees online in 2020. The following year the forum launched its first undergraduate seminar at the Abigail Adams Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in 2022 the first chapter was approved at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

In 2023, the Hippocratic Forum merged with the Society for Just Medicine to become The Hippocratic Society.

A key tenet of the society’s philosophy is that “renewal starts at home,” meaning members should strive to cultivate the virtues of  “courage, generosity and sincerity” within themselves. Mentors help trainees grow these attributes through dialogue, study and encouraging them to exemplify these characteristics in all life situations.

Per its mission statement, affiliates place a premium on serious and forthright discourse rather than capitulating to “the tendency in academia to ignore or suppress disagreement and dissent.”

The Hippocratic Society’s ambitious goal is to have an active chapter set up at every major academic medical centre in the United States by 2035.

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Curlin will be one of about 20 professionals to present at the Canadian Physicians for Life conference. Others include Kent Dunnington, a philosophy professor at Biola Christian University in La Mirada, California; Kristin Collier, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan; and Will Johnston, a family medicine physician who formerly served as president of Canadian Physicians for Life.

Johnston is being feted with the annual Dr. Paul Adams Award, which is bestowed to “someone who demonstrates exceptional initiative, professionalism and generosity within the pro-life medical community.”