Cutthroats in White Coats

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_national_review_cutthroats_in_white_coats.htm ^ | Theodore Dalrymple

[ventanax5]

The question of whether doctors are more or less likely than others to involve themselves in violence is similar to the question of whether they are more or less likely than others to be great writers. Certainly they are more likely than dentists; but the question is a difficult one to answer definitively.

However, speaking personally, I was not at all surprised by the involvement of doctors in Islamist attempted violence in Britain. Osama bin Laden’s deputy, after all, is a surgeon. George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and a man of unstintingly violent opinions and inclinations, trained as a pediatrician. It is no more surprising that doctors should become terrorists than that it should be members of the privileged classes who do so; on the contrary.

Doctors are the type of people one might expect to become terrorists: not all or even many doctors, of course, but some, because they have precisely the right psychological “qualifications” to do so.

First, doctors must train themselves to be dispassionate in the face of suffering, and be prepared to do things that might cause their patients discomfort and even pain, for the higher purpose of the good of the patients. The need for doctors to be able to distance themselves in this way is recognized by the old medical-school ritual of throwing medical students into the dissecting room on their first day, so that they learn to master and overcome their natural repugnance.

[Jaysun]

"Certainly they are more likely than dentists; but the question is a difficult one to answer definitively."

What? Doctors are more violent than dentists or better writers than dentist?

[Old_Mil]

Funny, I see no rush on the part of

non-Islamic

doctors to become terrorists. Wonder if there's a connection.

[GATOR NAVY]

Dalrymple bump.

[AZLiberty]

There was no shortage of German doctors to help implement Nazi euthanasia of “inferior” people.

[Dick Holmes]

“When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.” —Sherlock Holmes (created of course by a medico, Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle)