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| "The Crime Doctor" |
"Our lead story
today is (I confess) a bit dated, but nonetheless important. It
concerns a female gynaecologist and government minister in the Indian
state of Gujarat who was sentenced last year for orchestrating a
murderous riot in which 96 Muslims perished - as well as arson, beatings
and rape. It came to my attention in the latest issue of the very
interesting Indian Journal of Medical Ethics.
Which raises
the interesting question of whether doctors who are politicians will
always be more respectful of human rights. I'm thankful to a BMJ discussion forum
for compiling a list of doctors who also led nations. While there are
some admirable men and women among them, there seem to be a high
proportion of rogues.
The list includes Bashar al-Assad, of Syria, an opthalmologist who has presided over a civil war which has cost 70,000 lives (so far) and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the elusive head of al-Qaeda. There is Hastings Banda, former president of Zambia, who was notorious for corruption, and Che Guevara, the controversial Cuban/Argentinean guerrilla leader. There was George Habash, the PLO terrorist leader, and Radovan Karadžić, a psychiatrist who was the president of the Bosnian Serb Republic. He is currently being tried for genocide at the Hague.
There are
other more beneficent rulers, quite a number of them. But it does seem
that a course in medicine does not inoculate doctors against violence
and oppression. They are human, after all."
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