Transgressions and Entitlements

All is emphatically not forgiven. On occasion, yes, but how to forgive and handily overlook the fact that an individual deliberately took someone else's life? Not in a theatre of war, where such things occur inevitably. But, in this instance, by a person engrained in neo-Nazi ideology, and who deliberately shot to death another person. Shooting not just once, but seven times.

Would you trust that individual or view him with trepidation, even after he has served his sentence.

Repentance? Hard to believe that someone would murder another person, be found guilty, be sentenced to a lengthy incarceration, then upon release, feel he can pick up his life and pursue an avenue that would inevitably lead to his having professional life-and-death authority over yet other people. This man, for he does exist, is a Swede by the name of Karl Helge Hampus Svensson.

He is not known to have disavowed his Nazi affiliation, and that alone would make most people very nervous about being in his presence. But he is, evidently, a sharply intelligent man in the academic sense. While still in prison he completed online courses that prepared him to gain entry to the esteemed Karolinska Institute, in the medical course. This highly-regarded institute assists in selecting the year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Mr. Svensson was interviewed pre-admission by members of the school's admission committee, one a psychiatrist. He passed muster, not having revealed his background criminal act and conviction. It was only while he was ensconced at the institute as a medical student that the school was made aware of his past through an anonymous source.

This presented an obviously troubling problem to resolve, a truly perplexing conundrum. The man was obviously, through his pure academic achievements, capable of proving himself technically as a physician. Yet he had committed the most gravely hideous crime one person can visit upon another by taking a life.

If someone could find it impossible to command their passions, how could they be trusted to act and react in the best interests of society at any future date?

The institute's administrators grappled with the moral implications of certifying a medical practitioner who had betrayed the Hippocratic oath, not in the process of attempting to heal, but in the process of satisfying a primal urge. In refusing to certify an embryonic physician who might very well prove to be immensely capable - a badly needed medical practitioner at a time of universally critical shortages - they feared other repercussions.

Medicine and healing represent sacred trusts. Toward medical practitioners trust is invested beyond what might be extended to any other profession. This is the healing art, the sole profession through which men of science, experience and knowledge are capable of aiding the ill and prolonging life. The first precept of medical practise is: do no harm.

Yet we have seen that medical practitioners' intent can be corrupted, irreversibly damaged by pressures beyond the purely academic. There exists rogue practitioners, and medical agencies are appointed and exist to question, bring to account and bring action against those whose malpractise is harmful to the profession and to society.

And the world watched in horror not all that long ago as medical practitioners whose ethical scruples and morals had been suborned by their adherence to Islamist jihad launched attacks against civilian targets in Great Britain. Can one rehabilitate a murderer to become a compassionate healer?

Mr. Svensson is reported to have explained to his medical classmates at the institute: "Today, I am not the person I was ten years ago". But how can that be so? He very well is the same person, although it's likely he has learned to discipline himself whereas earlier he easily succumbed to the allure to act as he did.

In the end, the institute made the hard, but inevitable decision to deny this man the opportunity to practise medicine. It's difficult enough to distinguish characteristics suitable to the profession in those who apply for academic credentials. Anyone who was capable of dispatching another human being would not seem to have the requisite characteristics.

This man has many other options available to him, to stretch his future and to avail himself of educational and professional opportunities. He is not material to reflect the Hippocratic Oath. Lest it become the hypocritic oath.