Nialler

Amen,

Another issue arises here:

If the victims were in no way aware at the time that they had ben violated,

and,

if they are never to be told of this violation in order to avoid hurting them,

then,

the doctor has a valid defence along the lines of:

"my actions caused absolutely no pain or hurt to anybody".

Maybe not a legal defence, but certainly one which at least allows for a certain degree of discussion about the morality of his actions.

Would Natural Justice demand that a behaviour - no matter how aberrant - which causes effectively zero damage be punished harshly? (For the purposes of this discussion, I am disregarding the effects of unnecessary anaesthetics).

It strikes me that there is a difficulty in punishing someone when he can always ask the question: "Where are the victims and how I have damaged them?"
Needles to say, I deplore his actions and I presume that he will never practice again. I merely raise the issue for debate purposes.

Amen-Moses

This is the sort of thing I was hinting at, imo (and legally speaking) the crime he has committed is that of carrying out unwarrented medical procedures, i.e by administering drugs for other than medical reasons. He has also committed a lesser crime of taking nude photographs without consent but seeing as journalists do this all the time I doubt whether from a moral standpoint too much ground can be made in that regard!

If we are to try and define moral values by "harm" then indeed in this case (purely logically speaking - hey call me Spock ) the person creating the harm is not really the doctor (because the "victims" are unaware of the harm) but the person telling them what he did.

That is why I said this is an illuminating case.

Amen-Moses