We're quite happy to think badly of most professions. The corrupt politician, the sleazy hack, the bent copper and the vain actor are all familiar entertainment tropes. But when it comes to those who keep us alive, we understandably don't find the fact that they may be wrong 'uns in the least entertaining.
It's the topsy-turvy world-gone-mad incongruity that disturbs us. Healthcare workers are there to make us better, not worse. We call nurses 'angels' and while the promise 'First, do no harm' isn't actually part of the Hippocratic Oath (it's from another of Hippocrates' writings called Of the Epidemics) we're rightly appalled when a Harold Shipman or a Lucy Letby comes to light. When we are at our sickest we are at our most vulnerable. The thought of Dr Death or Matron Murder creeping along the hospital corridors on the way to our bedside is enough to freak out the most stoic of us.
I'm friends with a few doctors, and they're delightful. I'm quite prepared to believe that medics are no worse and no better than most of us - with the proviso that careers which give people power over other people stand a high chance of attracting sadists in a way that being a shelf-stacker doesn't. There have been some shocking stories over the past few years about sexual violence in hospitals.
Last month the Independent ran a story headlined 'Doctors and nurses accused of rape left free to work in NHS'. 'Between 2018 and 2024, 248 doctors faced 248 allegations of rape, sexual assault or attempted rape without their licences being suspended, according to new figures from the General Medical Council while the scandal-hit Nursing and Midwifery Council had more than 400 nurses practising without restrictions after sexual offence allegations between 2019 and 2024.'
Last year the University of Exeter, the University of Surrey and the Working Party on Sexual Misconduct in Surgery shared a report with BBC News which stated that:
'Nearly two-thirds of women surgeons who responded to the researchers said they had been the target of sexual harassment and a third had been sexually assaulted by colleagues in the past five years. Women say they fear reporting incidents will damage their careers and they lack confidence the NHS will take action. Female surgeons say they are being sexually harassed, assaulted and in some cases raped by colleagues...BBC News has spoken to women who were sexually assaulted in the operating theatre while surgery took place. The study's authors say there is a pattern of female trainees being abused by senior male surgeons, and this is happening now, in NHS hospitals. The Royal College of Surgeons said the findings were "truly shocking".'
Now the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry has heard that a whistle-blower who raised concerns about infection control at a 'super-hospital' said staff endured a 'culture of bullying' - far from the first time this has happened.
I was thinking about good doctors (the vast majority) vs bad doctors (the silly and/or sinister minority) recently during the continuing controversy over the Cass Report. It's quite extraordinary that the BMA can have decided as they did last week - without any consultation with members - to oppose and overturn such a thorough and level-headed piece of work.
Hundreds of senior doctors and health workers have publicly criticised the BMA, understandably claiming it does not reflect the views of members, and that it is 'going against the principles of evidence-based medicine and against ethical practice.' Helen Joyce recently called it 'policy capture' and reckoned it was down to around 30 people who had infiltrated the BMA leadership in order to have their way.
The haters of the Cass Report seem very keen on puberty blockers - which are still very much an unknown quantity, meaning that use of them could easily be described at an experiment. Why in the world would healthcare professionals be in favour of experimenting on people too young to drive a car or get a tattoo? Not just feeding them chemicals but with the aim of eventually (countdown till they're 'legal') sawing off healthy primary and secondary sex organs.
It wouldn't be the first time doctors went along with dreadful things for nasty reasons of their own. I knew how many qualified doctors had aided the Nazis in their vile 'experiments' but I was amazed to read that more than half of all German physicians were early joiners of the Nazi party, surpassing the enrolment of all other professions. The German Medical Society - their equivalent of the BMA - was instrumental role in the Nazi 'medical' programme, starting with the striking off of Jewish physicians, proceeding to forced sterilisation and mass euthanasia and culminating in genocide. The idea that doctors can be implicitly trusted - more than other sections of society - to always do the right thing is obviously ridiculous; think of how homosexuality was listed as an actual mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association until 1973.
In recent times, doctors assisted members of the 'trans-abled' community in lopping off perfectly healthy limbs. Indeed, it could be argued that those who identify as disabled were the one-legged canaries in the coal mine which opened the door to the slicing off of teenage breasts. A particularly grotesque case was covered by the BBC in 2000:
'The surgeon who amputated healthy limbs from private patients suffering from a psychiatric disorder has defended his decision to carry out the procedures. Dr Robert Smith spoke out in the debate over the ethics of the operations at Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary. The trust which runs the hospital has confirmed that no action will be taken against Dr Smith but the chairman has described as inappropriate this type of surgery in an NHS hospital. Dr Smith said all three were convinced that surgery was "the only possible redress for this quite seriously disabling condition... the concern is that many of these individuals will in fact injure themselves. There are quite a lot of anecdotal reports, largely from the States, of people taking the law into their own hands, lying on a railway line or shooting their legs off with a shotgun." Falkirk West MP Dennis Canavan said he found it "incredible" that a surgeon would amputate a healthy limb: "I would have thought that the General Medical Council would have an ethical code forbidding such a practice," he said.'
There are many reservations people hold about euthanasia. The main fear is the suspicion that greedy relations will bully their poor old parents into believing that they're worthless burdens on humanity in order to inherit. But a minor one is the feeling that there are a minority of people who may be drawn to the medical profession because they get a kick from hurting and even killing people.
Of course the majority of doctors want nothing more than to heal the sick, but it's a fact that absolute power corrupts absolutely - and what power is more absolute than the ability to administer death or preserve life? I don't want to see a society in which medics are given blank cheques to behave as morbidly as they see fit.