This is an interesting legal and ethical conundrum coming out of Sweden, and I'm unsure of my thoughts on it as well.
The Karolinska Institute here is famed for choosing the winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine each year, and as one of the world’s most prestigious medical schools it rejects many students with the highest grades.Last summer, Karl Helge Hampus Svensson, 31, was among the 180 students admitted to the freshman class after receiving top grades in high school and courses he took online over the previous six years.
But last fall, institute officials received two anonymous letters claiming that Mr. Svensson had been a Nazi sympathizer who was paroled from a maximum-security prison after being convicted in 2000 of murder, a killing the police called a hate crime.
After confirming the information, the institute had to decide: should Mr. Svensson be allowed to become a doctor?
Actually, after further consideration of this story, I think the answer is a firm "no." The medical profession is a unique one in that doctors are custodians of our body, health, and well being. As such, a person with a past history of taking another's life should be automatically excluded from the privilege of being a doctor.