Radicalized Professionals

Here is a thought provoking article:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/14/africa/14doctors-web.php?page=1
Radicalism among Muslim professionals worries many

For weeks, commentators and analysts in the Muslim world have been grappling with the implications that a Muslim doctor and engineer, at the pinnacle of their society, may have been behind the failed car bombings in London and Glasgow last month.

The question being asked in many educated and official circles is this: how could such acts be committed by people who have supposedly dedicated their lives to scientific rationalism and to helping others?

The answer, some scientists and analysts say, may lie in the way that a growing movement of fervent Muslims use science as reinforcement of religious belief, rather than as a means for questioning and exploring the foundations of the natural world.

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OK, now as someone who was the victim of malpractice and abuse by Western doctors, let me ask a few questions. Now I'm not advocating the radicalizing of Muslim engineers and doctors. But let's compare that trend with the trend among Western doctors. They are radicalized in maximizing how much they get paid. They are radicalized in avoiding malpractice claims. They are radicalized in embarrassing and demeaning some of the most vulnerable of their patients. They are radicalized in figuring out how to abuse drugs and alcohol through their access to pharmaceuticals. They are radicalized in violating patient confidentiality by discussing their patients with other people, in a demeaning way no less. They are radicalized in discussing their golf and talking to their stock brokers while you lay undressed and worried on a gurney. They are radicalized in taking the place of God instead of burnishing the faith of their patients. They are radicalized by spending more time being filmed for TV shows wielding their scalpels like Zorro than providing medicine to small towns, and to the poor. They rack up abortions like pool scores.

Am I exaggerating? Well, I'm not about my personal experience, because I still have the scars to prove it. I'm not saying there aren't many wonderful doctors in the US, though I've not met any, except maybe my retired allergist. The doctors I've met are worshipping something other than the God of the Bible or Allah of the Koran, and that's the truth. I would not take my dog to the doctors who have touched me.

At least St. Luke, a Syrian, was a great and faithful physician.