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Doctors who kill

Doctors actually involved in deaths of innocent people, let alone acts of terrorism? Impossible! No, not as events in the last week have shown with the arrest of doctors in the UK, in relation to the aborted terror attacks in Great Britain, and others under suspicion both in the UK and Australia. Of course, it may all come to naught.

To what extent doctors are involved in untoward behaviour contrary to what they profess to be doing as medicos - the Hippocratic oath having being abolished but doctors nevertheless working to heal the sick - is the subject of an interesting article, "Doctors who kill" in the IHT, by a retired physician living in Seattle.

''Until yesterday," London surgeon Abhay Chopada told the International Herald Tribune last week, "if anyone had said that doctors were involved in terrorism, I would have said that was completely impossible."

Actually, it's not only possible but more common than Dr. Chopada realizes. And, as a physician myself, while I find it repulsive, it's not all that surprising.

Within the Arab terror world alone, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's No. 2, trained as pediatrician. George Habash of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Hamas leader in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, also trained as medical doctors. So of course did the Nazi "angel of death," Josef Mengele.

In addition, there have been dozens of doctors convicted of murder and mass murder in famous public trials, including classic crimes of passion (Harvey Crippen in Britain and Jeffrey MacDonald in the United States) as well as various questionable "mercy" killings (Harold Shipman in Britain and America's "Dr. Death," Jack Kevorkian)."

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