Now that's a silly question

With Indian and Pakistani doctors in the mix of terrorism, Dr. Simon Wesseley ponders the following in the New England Journal:

Many doctors are driven by a sense of altruism to work in refugee camps, war zones, and disaster areas, their sole intention being to help the sick they see in front of them. But one can be motivated by a similar sense of idealism to wish not only to heal the individual patient but also to right the injustices that have produced the sickness, wounds, and death. The line has been crossed when the desire to change the world for the better becomes detached from any consideration of the consequences of one's actions for other people, when legitimate political action is replaced by the belief that the end justifies the means, and when righting injustice becomes confused with seeking revenge.

But this is not a blurry line.  The legitimate advocacy of underlying causations of illnesses, pandemics, poverty, etc. does not blend seamlessly with Nazi bacillus eradication, Palestinian terrorism or Indo/Pak suicide bombers.  If one earnestly believed that Jews are a bacteria, he simply practiced bad scientific medicine (where's the randomized controlled trial?).  And if one can murder random Brits for ideological-religious reasons, one was never a Physician. 

Let's not confuse legitimate 'line-crossing' at the edges of modern medicine with the clearly distinct criminality of those who use the scientific tools of medicine for non-medicinal purposes.  Physicians who practice medicine at the frontiers of ethics can be criticized and the medical community should grow through introspection of such cases.

But we need not doubt ourselves over murderers and terrorists.  They are not a legitimate part of the medical community and need not be examined; just excommunicated.

Comments

[carrie]

the "medical community" is too protective of its little community, writing and excluding and defining and perpetuating. why such an elite, non-transparent association do physicians insist on being a part of and even redefining according to how they think the "medical community" should be? fuck the medical community, just be people that are true to their word and open with the patients. fuck even criticizing the "medical community" because it's a bunch of arguing physicians who attempt to determine decisions but miss the mark. open this community up to the world; make those decisions with people beyond that dog gone thing.

[carrie]

the "medical community" is too protective of its little community, writing and excluding and defining and perpetuating. why such an elite, non-transparent association do physicians insist on being a part of and even redefining according to how they think the "medical community" should be? fuck the medical community, just be people that are true to their word and open with the patients. fuck even criticizing the "medical community" because it's a bunch of arguing physicians who attempt to determine decisions but miss the mark. open this community up to the world; make those decisions with people beyond that dog gone thing.