The Health Professionals' Council of South Africa (HPCSA) has excluded court testimony from a hearing into Wouter Basson, apartheid's "Doctor Death". But evidence that he is proud of his role in using chemical and biological weapons is not hard to find.
He has fought off criminal cases, and previous attempts at revoking his right to work as a doctor. And on Monday, Basson, the Cape Town cardiologist much praised by some of his patients, won another victory in yet another hearing against him by the HPCSA. Previous evidence which Basson himself presented in his own defence would not be considered in this week's new hearing into whether he upheld the ethical standards required of a doctor, the council decided on Monday.
But that will not save the HPCSA from having to do the moral mathematics on Basson's actions in the dying days of apartheid – because Basson is not only happy to admit to his actions, he is proud of what he did.
"I would do it again tomorrow," Basson said in a public address just over two months ago. "If I knew it would save lives, I would do it again."
In that instance, Basson was talking about his role in cross-border snatch operations, in which he used chemicals to put enemies of the state to sleep for transport back to South Africa, knowing they would be interrogated, and possibly tortured and killed.
In his role as public speaker, however, Basson is also happy to admit to having been an international smuggler, a spy (including on organisations such as Physicians for Human Rights) and, less directly, to having had a hand in developing a range of chemical and biological agents aimed at use in battle.
Evil and unfit to practice
Those are the actions the HPCSA has to consider within an ethical framework that seeks to ensure doctors have an impeccable reputation for not using their knowledge or skills for evil. Many within the medical fraternity, and involved in the oversight function of the HPCSA itself, consider Basson evil and unfit to practice. Yet Basson has no shortage of patients, and those who are even aware of his dubious past seem to agree with him in his ethical calculus.
Chemical and biological weapons developed by the apartheid state were a last line of defence, Basson tells his audiences. Though they had the ability to incapacitate or kill, that was not their true aim. Rather, the intent was to bring balance to a battle ground where an enemy had already used such agents, forcing South African troops into bulky and cumbersome protective gear.
"Protected troops are blind and deaf," Basson told his audience this May, speaking at a fundraising event in Oudtshoorn. "They can fight for 30 minutes maximum before dying of heat exhaustion."
Imposing similar restrictions on the enemy was crucial, Basson holds, and could have saved lives. The implication is that his role in developing such weapons was the lesser of the possible evils, just like his support role in snatch operations.
To date those arguments have not been tested, despite Basson's many years fighting off various legal actions against him, including a criminal prosecution the state took as far as the Constitutional Court before giving up. Those matters were judged on legal grounds rather than moral or ethical, and although various courts expressed concern at his conduct, the state could not prove he had acted illegally.
Politically motivated witch-hunt
?By renewing what Basson has characterised as a politically motivated witch-hunt against him – and seeking to steer clear of procedural land mines – the HPCSA may become the first tribunal to have to rule on whether a doctor can calculate odds and do ill for the greater good rather than taking an absolutist ethical stance.
Not that a decision either way will touch Basson too personally, if he manages to stick to one of the golden rules he shares with his audiences: do your best not to care what other people think or say about you.