It's what it is. Murderers can be doctors too you know? Being a doctor imposed a huge responsibility, not only to treat people equally but to try our best to do no harm as what has been stated by the ethical code mentioned in the Hippocratic oath; Do no harm. However, not everyone was created and behaved equally, there are others who became doctors just to satisfy their primary urges of cutting people. I have encountered several people in my life including a few other articles featuring few people who became a doctor so that they have legal means of cutting people without murdering or harming them. Whether it is appropriate or not, I will leave it up to you.
The number of doctors who are murderers can be fewer than what we have been told but as we have invested so much trust in them to make a clinical decision for us, the number was often exaggerated. It's particularly interesting to discuss regarding doctors who are murderers than a murder who murdered someone. In early 1900 up to 1980s, doctors are the one who signed death certificates and that particular document does not necessarily need certification from someone else. It's enough to have some information regarding the one who died and why they were dead, which was usually an assumption (back then, it was rather inaccurate). No question asked. It's rather disturbing but provides an easy way out for doctors who decided to turn their way to a darker side.
It is understandable that people with rudimentary knowledge and skills in medicine can be invisible but with the advancement of forensic science, we can only hope it will favour the one who is being murdered. Everyone can study the basis of medicine but without clinical experiences, it would be difficult to predict certain outcomes. Theoretically, poisons and any medication which is capable of killing patients in its lethal dose would behave rather differently for different people. Some people might have been overly sensitive with something but not for others. People who are allergic to nuts can sometimes be killed by them. Of course, any people can use this kind of knowledge to commit crimes but doctors would be able to make their death seems accidental.
Let's talk about one of the most notorious medical doctors who has been killing more than 200 patients while faking their death certificates, Dr Harold Shipman. Although he was the only one who has been successfully convicted in the UK and sentenced for life without any chance for parole, he was still considered as one of the most cunning, killing mostly elderly female by using a chemical known as diamorphine. What's a diamorphine you asked? It's an opioid. If it is instituted in a wrong dosage, it can cause respiratory depression and kill you rather quickly. It's painless, probably, but still, a crime. If you heard the story about this guy you would wonder, what's making him a vicious serial killer? I know we can't judge what he perceived his life be like, but being one of the best students during med school, married to a beautiful wife and practise his medicine with a good pay seem like good reasons to refrain from killing and committing crimes.
Regardless, he killed people mainly by using opioids while in surgery or sometimes at home, if someone seeks him for medical attention. That's rather cruel, don't you think? It's not in line with anything we have promised before becoming a medical doctor but then again, I'm not an expert in what's has been playing in the head of one of the greatest serial killer in the UK. He might be affected by mental illness for all we know, I mean looking at his records, he was doing fine until 1992 when he set up a private practice, that's when his coworkers or any of his friends suspected him to be a little bit deranged. A lot of people were trying to stop him but none of them can, by legal or any mean necessary.
He was invincible until he got greedy and tried to forge a fake will of one of his victims:
“I give all my estate, money and house to my doctor. My family are not in need, and I want to reward him for all the care he has given me and the people of Hyde.”
If you are one of the family members, you would agree that this statement is rather absurd. Someone, who inherit a certain amount of property to a stranger rather than his family members when they have a very good relationship? No way! This act of greediness motivates one of the victim's daughter to pursue the truth, and by all means, she was successful; well, while being shocked at what she knows. By the time he was arrested, his murder can be traced to other 15 women who were killed by opioids overdose and eventually had a faked cause of death in their death certificates.
So what's your opinion regarding a murderer who is a doctor now? Some people love to use the phrase "license to kill" referring to the doctor's ability to do something that the general population wouldn't be able to do to achieve therapeutic goals. It's actually not, no matter who you are and what you do, if you kill then you are a criminal. Respiratory depression remains the thing that could be inflicted on a patient if they overdose of opioids yet, we are still risking of using this medication as at the right dose, it could be beneficial to patients. Morphine, for example, remains as one of the frequently used opioids in Malaysia to control moderate to severe pain, especially postoperative pain. What about euthanasia? Well, I would discuss my opinion on that at some other time; maybe during my holiday next month?
In an article written by Herbert G Kinnell, a retired consultant psychiatrist, he made 4 conclusions when he reviewed some of the notorious serial killers who have medical backgrounds:
- Arguably medicine has thrown up more serial killers than all the other professions put together
- The medical profession seems to attract some people with a pathological interest in the power of life and death
- Doctors have been responsible for killing not only patients and strangers but members of their own family
- The political killer's par excellence were the Nazi doctors and the Japanese doctors engaged in biological warfare
The American doctor serial killer named H. H. Holmes was quite popular back in 1893 when he bought a building, disguised it as a luxurious hotel when in fact it was a maze, filled with traps and instruments that can be used to kill his victim. He would throw his unconscious or dead victim through a metal shute from their bedroom to the basement so that they can be gutted and probably sold to medical schools which require cadaver to teach their medical students. Some of them were even killed alive! Before being a murderer, he was involved in a few other criminal activities including fraud businesses just to earn cash. He had an accomplice who faked his own death so that they would receive a sum of money from an insurance company but later his accomplice was killed (for real) with a concentrated chloroform. He was a sadist and a true psychopath who utilised his knowledge of medicine to kill and scam people for something.
Even though if it was scary, I have to admit, he owned a rather well-structured killing castle even though to public eyes, his hotel was simply worst in terms of its architecture. Some rooms don't have any door, and some doors opened up straight to a wall; he built a stairway which ended to a wall and in some rooms, he equipped a ventilator that was connected directly to poison gas. Some people might assume that he would be rather selective to the guest of his hotel; if he wanted to kill someone, he would provide a room in a certain floor which is equipped with all of the killing instrument and depends on its architecture, it's nearly impossible to run once you have gone in. It's like you must be committed to killing yourself.
Medicine has been evolving and forensic sciences are far more advanced than it was 20 to 50 years ago. It's rather complicated if you are in medicine and you want to kill people. Even if a doctor, mistakenly gave the wrong medication for a patient which subsequently recovered, they would have to justify their mistake to the hospital board. This is not the time when you will not be questioned regarding your wrongfully written cause of death, you will be asked! People need to be creative to be a killer now. Maybe they will...
Source
- Killing the symptom without killing the patient
- Harold Shipman
- Serial homicide by doctors: Shipman in perspective
- Harold Shipman: Who was 'Doctor Death', how many of his patients did he kill and how was he finally caught?
- 9 Things You Didn't Know About America's First Serial Killer, H.H. Holmes
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