Physician terrorists

Much surprise is being expressed at the fact that several of the suspects in the recent terrorist attacks in Britain are physicians. "How can someone trained to heal take lives?" we ask.

Unfortunately, medical training does not absolutely insure that one is a moral person. The infamous Nazi medical experiments were carried out by physicians. More recently, Dr. Che Guevara, a dermatologist, tried to spread violent revolution throughout Latin America. Dr. George Habash, a pediatrician from a Christian family, led one of the most violent Palestinian terrorist organizations, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And Dr. Baruch Goldstein was a graduate of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, murdered 29 unarmed Arabs before he himself was killed by those he was attacking. And of course there have been occasional less publicized incidents of physicians killing their patients, surrupticiously, or publicly a la Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

As a faculty member at the last institution named above, I do my best to install values into my students. I am sure that the professors of all the people described above did as well. But sometimes we fail. Fortunately, examples like this are rare. But that they exist at all is depressing to me.