Doctors motivated to terror

Dr. Sanity looks at what would cause a medical doctor to make a choice for terrorizing others.

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In those who enter the medical profession there is almost always a curious mix of motivations. The motivation most often talked about (and believe me, I have read hundreds of prospective medical students' essays on why they want to become doctors, and after a while they all merge into one long, treacly sentimental tract) is the desire to do good, to help people, and to ease suffering.

This is good and essential, obviously. But have you ever considered the reality that in order to do good; or to help people in physical pain, that you must sometimes (actually often) cause them even greater pain for a time? That, if you are a surgeon, you must find some enjoyment (or at least be able not to get sick) slicig people open or debriding wounds and mucking around in them? Even those of us who are psychiatrists must often lead the unsuspecting patient to experience (and hopefully to resolve) all the unbearable psychological pain that his psychological defenses have been mobilized to ward off.

This aspect of medicine is not talked about much, but it is very real nonetheless. The physician's own cruel and sadistic impulses are never far below the surface. In the healthy person these impulses are generally sublimated and the instinctual energy derived from them can then be used to benefit society. Nevertheless, this is the dark side of altruism and the motivation to do good, and it is as human as the impulse to do good.

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People in the medical profession can become immune to the pain of others. Plaintiff lawyers will never put a nurse on a jury for a personal injury case. Perhaps it is because they do not want to hear someone else whining about the pain they experienced. However all of this is several degrees away from setting out to do mass murder. That appears to be a disease that affects too many Muslims whether they are doctors or not and whether the victims are Muslim or not.