Wasn't Che Gueverra -- who enjoyed personally torturing and killing political opponents, who liked to torture relatives of his victims by having them beg for the victims' lives while Guevera knew the victims were already dead (a la the villain in Tosca), and who so terrorized Bolivian peasants and Indians that these people helped the CIA track Guevera and put him down -- wasn't he also an MD. If I remember correctly, the terrorist who flayed alive a captured CIA agent and video-taped the proceedings was also an MD. I suspect that medicine is probably not all that uncommon a career-path for disciplined and talented sociopaths with a sadistic twist.

Both excellent posts above. On a related note, the federal government is censoring pro-western websites such as MEMRI and JihadWatch, while allowing CAIR and its ilk to continue to operate.

1st Amendment, it was nice knowing you. R.I.P.

Sorry, forgot to include the cite for the post above:

And don't forget Mengele.

The kind of narcissist/psychopath who would do such things is probably attracted to the power and prestige of medicine in the first place.

Yes, some doctors turn out to be murderers, just as some law enforcement officers commit crimes. Is Jimbino really suggesting fewer doctors as a way to reduce mortality, and isn't there a huge difference in intent between iatrogenic deaths and terrorist doctors?

included a doctor who justified his support of terrorism by suggesting there were two of him -- one who cured and one who killed.

Interestingly, that's better justification than an abortionist could claim.

Steve Lubet: That cite didn't come through. Care to try again? I'm really eager to see how MEMRI is being 'censored' by the USG.

I agree with the comment wondering how these guys passed chemistry. At 14, my doctor buddy and I at least knew how to make a good pipe bomb. By 18 we were using ammonium nitrate and potassium perchlorate (the latter VERY carefully). These guys think a car full of propane will scatter a bunch of shrapnel? And that they're going to get the right fuel-air mix by good luck? It'd have created a fireball and a nasty fire, but I can't see it scattering those nails anywhere. Even black powder's pretty mediocre at causing fragmentation.

And I guess it didn't occur to them that it's pretty hard to steer a car full of propane.... Memo to files: the human metabolism does not run well on propane.

And what of doctors who administer lethal injections for purposes of capital punishment? I guess they can say there are two of me -- one who cures and one who kills.

No, one who cures illnesses in human bodies and the other that removes cancers from society.

Those criminals who are finally put to death are those who have done horrible things against innocent humans. They must be removed to protect others. (Including fellow prisoners if they got life in prison.)

The real scandal isn't that doctors can be terrorists. It's that socialized medicine drives people out of the profession. Since there is a shortage of doctors, foreign doctors have to be recruited. If it weren't for socialized medicine, these doctors wouldn't have been allowed into the country. Just another benefit of government regulation of the market.

zawaheri is also a dr

I wonder if they were educated in Pakistan or some such place before coming to Britain. That would explain their cluelessness about the basics of science.

While its a bad idea to google fuel-air bomb, I think with a little research you'll find that the bomb they were attempting was not simply a propane explosion and in fact if successful would have been far more devestating.

But like I said before, you look it up. I don't want the attention.

Houston Lawyer has hit the larger point. Mark Steyn has a column on this today. What could possibly have caused an honored and well paid profession to fall into such disfavor among the home grown?

With respect to Prof Steve Lubet's comment regarding Dr. Baruch Goldstein: while there is no doubt that the killing of 29 innocent Palestinian worshipers was a heinous act, I would distinguish between Goldstein and Dr. Rantisi in that the latter repeatedly ordered Hamas suicide bombers to kill innocent Jewish and Arab children alike. Goldstein—and this is not to excuse nor justify his conduct in the least—never ordered others to carry out suicide missions. That being said, Prof Lubet's point is correct as another example of a physician committing an atrocious attack.

Jonathan, given our tribal instincts it is not surprising to see even doctors taking sides or actively participating in actions that kill those in out groups. Yes, we might shudder at such behavior, but let's not fool ourselves into attributing it only to those other "bad guys" - or even to doctors. Our own human hands are all too bloody.

Closer to home, we might recall the forty-year long project by the US Public Health Service and CDC to deny information and antibiotic treatment to syphillitic blacks at Tuskegee, which was defended by one of the project leaders with the statement that "The men's status did not warrant ethical debate. They were subjects, not patients; clinical material, not sick people."

One should also not forget the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents that the US conducted through mass urban firebombing and nuclear weapons in Japan, nor the roughly hundred thousand Iraqis who have lost their lives as a result of our sanctions, war actions and ongoing occupation against our erstwhile ally in Iraq.

These lives are hardly noticed here, much less counted by the US military or the administration. But do they deserve no consideration, simply because we are the ones doing the killing?

And the murderous sectarian chearleading by religious leaders in the disintegrating Yugoslavia was also quite nauseating.

So while it is fair to bemoan that doctors become terrorist, let's make sure our moral scope does not end with the actions of our perceived enemies - since that narrow perspective would deny any enduring lessons from the Shoah and toehr relevant history.