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LONG HISTORY OF THE DOCTORS OF DOOM
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/world/l ong-history-of-the-doctors-of-doom/2007/07/06/1183 351455116.html
July 7, 2007
DOCTORS have frequently been accomplices in politically motivated
repression, brutality and genocide, conducting inhumane experiments on
victims, participating in torture and directing programs to exterminate
the enemy. For no reason other than they had the power to do it at
the time, they have beaten, tortured and killed victims.
Political medical murderers reverse the process of patients seeking
help from a doctor, instead misusing their skills on vulnerable groups
in the name of nationalism or ideology.
Systematic participation of doctors in state terrorism began with the
Armenian genocide in Turkey in 1915. Medical personnel were directly
involved in the killings, often participating in torture. Behaeddin
Shakir and Mehmet Nazim established extermination squads staffed
by criminals.
Nazim, in one of the most misguided appointments in the history
of medicine, was professor of legal (ethical) medicine at Istanbul
Medical School.
Mehmed Resid was involved in the "deportation" of 120,000
Armenians. Resid's brutality included nailing red-hot horseshoes on
the victim's chest, and crucifying them on makeshift crosses.
The Armenian genocide provided the template for the Nazi holocaust,
leading to the most notorious example of medical complicity in state
abuse: Nazi doctors who participated in euthanasia and genocide,
of whom the most well known is Josef Mengele.
Japanese medical abuses were as bad as those of the German doctors. The
Imperial Army's Unit 731 conducted unspeakably cruel experiments on
the people of Manchuria, infecting villages with anthrax, plague and
cholera, performing live vivisection - cutting out the heart or brain
from living victims, or burning them alive with jolts of electricity.
Involvement of doctors in state repression and abuse has, if anything,
escalated since 1945. Medical dictators running repressive regimes
include: the former cruel ruler of Haiti Papa Doc Duvalier, the Malawi
dictator Hastings Banda, Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast,
and Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
The psychiatrist Radovan Karadzic, who led the Bosnian genocide
(1992-95) in which more than 200,000 people died, used training in
group therapy to formulate terror tactics and had his troops shell
the hospital where he worked.
There has been a rise in doctors leading terrorist groups, including
George Habash, a paediatrician and leader of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, and Osama bin Laden's personal physician,
Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the world's most wanted terrorists.
Why do doctors kill patients, or use their skills to participate in
horrendous experiments, torture or genocidal murder in the service
of the state or a political cause?
The British psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond described the three facets of
the medical role as sapiential, authoritarian and charismatic. All
doctors have these three factors to a varying degree in their
personality; when any factor is overarching, then problems occur.
Medicine attracts a certain kind of personality, one lured by the
power of life over death. Many clinicidal doctors have extremely
narcissistic personalities, a grandiose view of their capability and
an inability to accept they could be criticised or need help from
other doctors. Such doctors develop a God-complex, getting a thrill
out of ending suffering and by determining when a person dies. Two
such doctors would be Harold Shipman in Britain and Michael Swango
in the US, who between them killed 313 patients.
This narcissism explains the most puzzling aspect of clinicide,
doctors who cannot stop what they are doing. Such individuals, while
not necessarily psychopathic, go to extraordinary lengths to get what
they want.
Professor Robert Kaplan is a forensic psychiatrist in Wollongong and
Sydney, and honorary clinical associate professor at the Graduate
School of Medicine, Wollongong. His book Clinicide: the Story of
Medical Murder is in press.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/world/l ong-history-of-the-doctors-of-doom/2007/07/06/1183 351455116.html
July 7, 2007
DOCTORS have frequently been accomplices in politically motivated
repression, brutality and genocide, conducting inhumane experiments on
victims, participating in torture and directing programs to exterminate
the enemy. For no reason other than they had the power to do it at
the time, they have beaten, tortured and killed victims.
Political medical murderers reverse the process of patients seeking
help from a doctor, instead misusing their skills on vulnerable groups
in the name of nationalism or ideology.
Systematic participation of doctors in state terrorism began with the
Armenian genocide in Turkey in 1915. Medical personnel were directly
involved in the killings, often participating in torture. Behaeddin
Shakir and Mehmet Nazim established extermination squads staffed
by criminals.
Nazim, in one of the most misguided appointments in the history
of medicine, was professor of legal (ethical) medicine at Istanbul
Medical School.
Mehmed Resid was involved in the "deportation" of 120,000
Armenians. Resid's brutality included nailing red-hot horseshoes on
the victim's chest, and crucifying them on makeshift crosses.
The Armenian genocide provided the template for the Nazi holocaust,
leading to the most notorious example of medical complicity in state
abuse: Nazi doctors who participated in euthanasia and genocide,
of whom the most well known is Josef Mengele.
Japanese medical abuses were as bad as those of the German doctors. The
Imperial Army's Unit 731 conducted unspeakably cruel experiments on
the people of Manchuria, infecting villages with anthrax, plague and
cholera, performing live vivisection - cutting out the heart or brain
from living victims, or burning them alive with jolts of electricity.
Involvement of doctors in state repression and abuse has, if anything,
escalated since 1945. Medical dictators running repressive regimes
include: the former cruel ruler of Haiti Papa Doc Duvalier, the Malawi
dictator Hastings Banda, Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast,
and Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
The psychiatrist Radovan Karadzic, who led the Bosnian genocide
(1992-95) in which more than 200,000 people died, used training in
group therapy to formulate terror tactics and had his troops shell
the hospital where he worked.
There has been a rise in doctors leading terrorist groups, including
George Habash, a paediatrician and leader of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, and Osama bin Laden's personal physician,
Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the world's most wanted terrorists.
Why do doctors kill patients, or use their skills to participate in
horrendous experiments, torture or genocidal murder in the service
of the state or a political cause?
The British psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond described the three facets of
the medical role as sapiential, authoritarian and charismatic. All
doctors have these three factors to a varying degree in their
personality; when any factor is overarching, then problems occur.
Medicine attracts a certain kind of personality, one lured by the
power of life over death. Many clinicidal doctors have extremely
narcissistic personalities, a grandiose view of their capability and
an inability to accept they could be criticised or need help from
other doctors. Such doctors develop a God-complex, getting a thrill
out of ending suffering and by determining when a person dies. Two
such doctors would be Harold Shipman in Britain and Michael Swango
in the US, who between them killed 313 patients.
This narcissism explains the most puzzling aspect of clinicide,
doctors who cannot stop what they are doing. Such individuals, while
not necessarily psychopathic, go to extraordinary lengths to get what
they want.
Professor Robert Kaplan is a forensic psychiatrist in Wollongong and
Sydney, and honorary clinical associate professor at the Graduate
School of Medicine, Wollongong. His book Clinicide: the Story of
Medical Murder is in press.