Friday, March 12, 2004

Wife-poisoner hired as medical-ethics lecturer.

The University of Manchester has hired a medical-ethics lecturer who served 7 years for trying to poison his wife (and then tried to cover his tracks by poisoning drinks in a Safeway supermarket). Here's the quote I love (from medical ethics lecturer Piers Benn of Imperial College London) in the Reuters report on this story:
"Normally people who get into moral philosophy do so because they care about making the world a better place or putting things right . . . But I can't see any logical contradiction between being able to think about ethical questions and being able to do rather criminal acts."
I hate to be too hard on the fellow, but is it not a bit odd that a criminal conviction for Medicare fraud would almost certainly get you bounced from the bioethics elite, but not the attempted murder of your spouse?

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