You may not be aware of the furore that has broken out in Sweden over the fact that a convicted murderer was granted permission to enter medical school and study.
The guy has had various aliases, so the story is difficult to follow. But—bottom line—he was admitted to a medical school at one of the greatest institutes in the world. The Karolinska Institute.
Then the story broke and the Institute (which I hold in the highest regard) was really embarrassed. The trouble was that it was not easy to get rid of him! Sweden is a civilized country which holds the basic premise that once a criminal has served time, he’s paid his debt and there is nothing further that he need fear.
This is in complete contrast to the USA, which has a cruel and inhuman view that once a guy gets out of jail, after serving time, then the punishment starts. He can be hounded, abused, persecuted and generally hurt in ways which are reminiscent of the behavior of vicious and crude school children.
But the question is raised: should anyone who has ever taken life be allowed to the (supposedly) hallowed ranks of a healer? I think not. I think VEHEMENTLY not. We can treat him with courtesy and regard but that doesn’t mean we have no boundaries.
No-one who has stooped to murder can ever claim to be pro life, pro love, pro healing and a pastoral counselor. Look, I know people change, people reform. But THERE IS A LINE. There must be a line… Only a fool would not take into account that criminals who go to jail, often to NOT reform.
Anyway, the Karolinska was lucky and finally got rid of him on the grounds that he had falsified his high school records. But then he was admitted to a second well-known medical school — Uppsala, Sweden’s oldest university. He was using a false name, of course, which is how he got past the admissions board. Nobody asked him about the gap in his CV, which covered the years he was in jail [he didn’t mention it, so he is an untrustworthy liar too].
But once the truth is out, what are the authorities to do?
Last week, Uppsala officials, responding to concerns about the murderer’s admission, said he had not participated in class work, but did not say why.
In another embarrassing twist, a Swedish newspaper reported that much of the verdict and court files regarding Bjorn Soderberg, the murder victim, had been cut out or replaced with blank pages. The police said they had been unable to find a culprit. Does that mean the killer had an accomplice within the system?
And in still another case, a 24-year-old medical student at Lund University was convicted last April of raping a 14-year-old boy while he slept. A district court sentenced the student to two years in prison, but a higher court reduced the sentence to two years’ probation and medical therapy.
When the dean at Lund sought to expel the student, a national board that reviews expulsions blocked the action, saying that although the man had committed a serious crime, he was not considered a threat to people or property. The decision was then reversed by an administrative court, which upheld the expulsion; the student did not appeal.
Swedish laws and customs are rightly and justly sympathetic to released offenders, saying that once they have served their time they should be treated like ordinary citizens. But the cases raise questions about protecting the rights of patients and fellow medical students and health care workers.
That’s not to say a murderer or rapist will, by nature, strike again. But once that line of killing or raping another is crossed, I do believe certain rights are forfeit. Among those is the right to be a doctor.
Am I right? Write me and tell me. Is a doctor supposed to only preserve and enhance life?
This story raises another question for me. I have all my life believed that doctors should not, must not, participate in executions; even legal executions. It is completely at variance with the spirit of the calling. I don’t care that the authorities want it done right and want a certified corpse at the end of it.
Killing, even judicial killing, is not part of a doctor’s purview and never should be.
As for the Nazi doctors, who used human beings as subjects for experiments, they are beyond the pale. I think even God must have a hard time loving such physicians. But, of course, IG-Farben and their spin off drug companies (La Roche, makers of valium, for example, and Bayer, Hoechst and Agfa) are still cashing in on those Nazi experiments on wretched human beings. That, to me, typifies all that is criminal behind the drug companies and their greedy, inhuman stock holders.
During the planning of the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland, IG Farben cooperated closely with Nazi officials and directed which chemical plants should be secured and delivered to IG Farben.
In 1941, an investigation exposed a “marriage” cartel between John D. Rockefeller’s United States-based Standard Oil Co. and I.G. Farben. It also brought new evidence concerning complex price and marketing agreements between DuPont, a major investor in and producer of leaded gasoline, U.S. Industrial Alcohol Co. and their subsidiary, Cuba Distilling Co.
The investigation was eventually dropped, like dozens of others in many different kinds of industries, due to the need to enlist industry support in the war effort. However, the top directors of many oil companies agreed to resign and oil industry stocks in molasses companies were sold off as part of a compromise worked out.
Read that again: this isn’t just Nazi war criminals. The Rockefellers, DuPont and other totally inhuman and greed-driven US companies, which still exist (probably should be bombed out of existence, as Rockefeller bombed and killed his competitors), were part and parcel of the cruelties of places like Auschwitz, the slave factory and killing machine.
“Arbeit Macht Frei” (work makes free) was famously written over the entry gates to the Hell of Auschwitz. It should really read “Work makes US conglomerates rich, so shut up and eat dirt, you ba***ards.”
I despise the morals that gave rise to medicinal human experiments and torture. The fact that current US companies STILL capitalize on what was gained by evil and greed in concentration camps is sickening.
Here’s more, if you have a stomach for it:
Farben aided the Nazis in waging aggressive warfare and perpetrating crimes against humanity by manufacturing Zyklon B, the cyanide gas used in the Nazi death camps. At Nuremberg, in 1947, 24 Farben executives were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
At Auschwitz Farben exploited slave labor to build the world’s largest synthetic rubber and oil facility. This installation was dubbed “IG Auschwitz” and was so huge that it used as much electricity as did the entire city of Berlin. Over 25,000 inmates were worked to death in its construction.
Farben also produced poisonous solutions for use in aggressive warfare and in human experimentation. At Nuremberg, Judge Paul M. Hebert focused on Farben’s extensive contributions to chemical warfare “research, development and production of mustard gas, tear gas, nitrogen mustard gas, adamsite (throat irritant) and phosgene.” Another segment of the Nuremberg indictment revealed that “poison gases and various deadly pharmaceuticals manufactured by Farben were used in experimentation upon, and the extermination of enslaved persons in concentration camps throughout Europe.”
I’m talking pharmaceutical companies, right?
Farben produced the stabilizer for Zyklon B and owned 42.5% of Degesch (the “German vermin-combatting corporation”), developer of this highly virulent weapon.
“When the final solution added Jews to the SS extermination plans, Degesch profits reflected the new prosperity,” concluded Joseph Borkin in the crime and punishment of IG Farben.
Because of its extensive involvement in such a vast array of destructive activities, the name Farben came to epitomize the ultimate in corporate evil incarnate. Josiah duBois, chief prosecutor at the Farben trial, considered the defendants and their crimes so malevolent that he wrote a book about them titled the Devil’s Chemists: 24 Conspirators Of The International Farben Cartel Who Manufacture Wars.
The complete dissolution of Farben was therefore considered an indispensable means of assuring the peace after World War II. In 1947 a plan was formulated by the American military government to break up Farben into 47 independent units.
Guess what? It never happened. The American corporate world, now as guilty as the Nazi’s, did not act as humanity and conscience dictate. Ultimately, Farben was only divided into three companies: Hoechst, Bayer and BASF.
Do you buy from these companies? Don’t.
Do you hold shares? Burn them.