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Dr. Death

ammit's picture
Wed, 2008-01-30 15:20 — ammit

A guy in Sweden was convited of a hate crime in '99 and served his sentence. Then, he applied to med school. And got in. And kicked out due to a technicality. But is it okay for doctors to be ex-murderers?

(It's on NYTimes, so you might need a login.)

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Sun, 2008-02-03 10:00 — Single Entendre
Single Entendre's picture

I've been thinking about

I've been thinking about this. There are obviously several answers to the question. The first that came to mind was that some places believe that prison can and does rehabilitate the prisoners, and so once someone gets out, they are returned to regular citizenship status, with voting, and employability, and so on. Another thought is that if he got out on a technicality, he didn't get a chance to get rehabilitated. Also, I wonder who hires a doctor who is a convict? Because, really, checking references is something you'd think folks would want to do when they're talking about someone in a position to manage life and death situations. And, I remembered the recent story about the guy who got out of jail, and got a degree in criminal justice and used that knowledge to stay out of the grasp of law enforcement for a long time.

But, ultimately, I concluded that probably a lot more doctors are murderers that we'll ever know. So it's probably best not to even worry about it.

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The only difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is none.