From Medicine to Mass Murder

The aborted bombings in Britain raise the question of how men trained as healers could be converted to indiscriminate killers.

What political, ethnic and/or religious grievances would persuade them to turn from saving lives to taking them?

The British equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath, as formulated by the General Medical Council, obligates physicians, among other duties, to:

“Make the care of your patient your first concern.

“Protect and promote the health of patients and the public.

“Never abuse your patients' trust in you or the public's trust in the profession.”

How do doctors and medical workers go from treating diseases and wounds to packing cars with gasoline, gas cylinders and nails to explode and kill or mutilate as many innocent human beings as possible?

How can they be transformed from serving a society to trying to destroy it and in the name of what sacred cause?

Even more horrific is the possibility that some or all came to Britain as sleepers with the intention of terrorism, multitudes of Manchurian Candidates waiting to strike.

Their ineptitude argues against that, but it certainly is possible.

In any case, the fact that they failed doesn’t erase the haunting questions. Whatever answers we get will tell us painful things about the human condition in the 21st century.

Should the British Build an Ark?

While coping with the wave of car bombings, the most unflappable people on earth were being warned of even greater disaster this weekend.

The Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, is telling them that recent floods around the country “are not just a result of a lack of respect for the planet, but also a judgment on society's moral decadence...We are reaping the consequences of our moral degradation, as well as the environmental damage that we have caused."

The Bishop, a leading evangelical, made it clear that the floods, which have left thousands homeless, were brought on by recent legislation approving gay marriage.

The Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, joined in the warning: "Instead of living as if we owned the earth we need to recover a sense of being participants in a web of life with responsibilities to other life forms and to our children."

The weekend forecast calls for more torrential rainstorms. There was no word on how “other life forms” would be chosen if an ark were built.