First, Do No Harm

I find it very troubling that the terrorists involved in the London and Scotland plots are doctors.

Leftists and terrorist apologists and anti-Semites like Jimmy Carter like to say that terrorism is born of poverty and desperation and hopelessness.

Their theory doesn't apply here.

Doctors aren't poverty-stricken; nor are their futures clouded by hopelessness.

GLASGOW, Scotland -- The fast-moving investigation into failed car bombings in Glasgow and London has swept up at least five physicians and a medical student, officials said Tuesday, including a doctor seized at an Australian airport with a one-way ticket. Many of the men had roots outside Britain — with ties to Iraq, Jordan and India — and worked together at hospitals in Scotland or England, officials said.

None of the plotters arrested so far is named on U.S. terror watch lists that identify potential suspects, according to a senior American counterterror official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

British Broadcasting Corp. and Sky News identified a suspect badly burned in the failed attack on Glasgow airport as Khalid Ahmed, also a doctor. Police declined to confirm the identity, but have said the injured man was the driver of the Jeep that rammed the Scottish airport. He is hospitalized under armed guard.

One of the doctors from India, 27-year-old Muhammad Haneef, was arrested late Monday at the international airport in the Australian city of Brisbane, the Australian attorney general said.

Haneef worked in 2005 at Halton Hospital in England, hospital spokesman Mark Shone said. A 26-year-old man arrested Saturday in Liverpool also practiced there, Shone said.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said Haneef was being held under counterterrorism laws that allow him to be detained without charges being immediately filed.

"The doctor was regarded by the hospital as, in many senses, a model citizen — excellent references and so on," said Queensland Premier Peter Beattie.

Police in Glasgow said two more men — aged 25 and 28 — were arrested Sunday in residences at Glasgow's Royal Alexandra Hospital, where staff identified them as a junior doctor and a medical student.

"Model citizens."

This is especially disturbing.

Of all people, those in the medical profession should not be plotting to kill innocents. It runs counter to the life path they chose.

I know. Some doctors routinely perform procedures that kill innocents. As abortionists, some doctors make a living out of killing.

Still, it bothers me that the London and Scotland terror plots were the work of doctors.