The “Do No Harm” principle, first put down by a Hippocratic writer 2400 years ago, has a long history as a basis and guide for ethical behavior in several traditions.

The wellbeing of the people we are trying to help must be the focus of our efforts to help them. 

In other words, the cure must not be worse than the disease and the intervention must not destroy (or harm) that which it is meant to help.

Wellbeing is not some brief thing, existing only in the moment we offer assistance. It is not a photograph of a school or a rebuilt house or a successful surgery or of feeding a child. The principle of “do no harm” demands that we consider their wellbeing apart from and beyond our intervention.

The Principle first appeared in Epidemics, (Book I, Chapter 2), one of the earlier works in the Hippocratic corpus. The writings are as much about how to be a physician in the moral, social, and behavioral sense as they are about techniques of treating disease. Those early authors recognized that the how mattered as much as, if not more, than what they did.

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The Project
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History of the Do No Harm Project