The Archive

First do no harm

So the bad guys have struck again, driving a burning car into Glasgow airport. And what’s more, everyone involved seems to be doctors.

This raises two key questions for me. Firstly, is Al Quaeda so overmanned with highly trained staff that they can afford to send doctors off on suicide missions instead of using their incomes to, say, fund the oranisation?

Or is it that they’re just so poorly organised that they just didn’t really think about it. So then later…

“Hey Hassan is back from his aborted mission. He’s wounded and needs medical attention immediately.”
“Right, are any of you lot doctors?”
“Not me. I’m a plumber.”
“Receptionist.”
“I do the bins. I also have a window cleaning round though. Ali is a doctor though. Where is he?”
“Um, we got him to blow himself up last week.”
“Oh. Well that’s ok, Bilal’s a neurosurgeon. That’s like a superdoctor right?”
“Er yeah, but we had him self-destruct the week before.”
“Mohammed?”
“Erm, also dead. But Jamal did home economics, so I think he can sew a bit.”
“Right. That’ll do.”

Given the quality of the attacks (shabby, poorly thought through operations at best, weren’t they?) I’m guessing that the latter scenario is more likely.

Which brings me to the other worrying point. Leaving aside the issue of medical folks being healers not exploders, doctors are supposed to be smart right?

I mean, we entrust our health to these people on the grounds that they are intelligent and highly trained.

But these guys were obviously idiots. So what does that say about all the other doctors out there.

Frankly, until the medical establishment can demonstrate that they can at least pull off a simple terrorist atrocity without cocking it up, I’m going to stick to self diagnosis and Lemsip.

posted by Peter The Great @ 8:10 AM