HEALTH WATCH : Physicians’ Prescription

First, do no harm, says medicine’s Hippocratic oath. Do doctors apply that to themselves as well as to their patients? And how do doctors define what harms?

For the second time in a decade, the Harvard Medical School’s newsletter has asked its faculty to answer these questions. This month’s edition reports on the survey and some of its surprises.

For openers, the faculty seems to take seriously the standard medical wisdom about alcohol. Only 11% of the doctors say they take as many as two drinks a day, 70% saying they take fewer than four a week.

Same with cigarettes. Ten years ago, only 8% of the faculty smoked. That has dwindled to 3%.

Caffeine, as Dr. William Ira Bennett, a contributing editor, writes, “is a different matter.” Nearly three-fourths of the sample drink caffeinated coffee. No problem, Bennett says, “given the lack of proof that moderate intake is harmful.” A third eat red meat less than once a week. More than half eat meat less than three times a week. And they know about seat belts. More than eight in 10 buckle up regularly and only three people of 672 said they never use them.

Exercise is among the surprises. Only about half exercise often enough and long enough to bring real help to the heart and the waistline.

The big surprises are that nearly a third have no personal physician, one hasn’t had a checkup since 1968 and typically the last examination was in 1988. Could it be that Harvard Medical School faculty members take such good care of themselves they needn’t bother?