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Evil Defined: It's What We Say It Is
Evil to be 'measured' in death-penalty cases. Psychiatrists develop 'depravity rating' to decide which convicted killers die.Research psychiatrists say they can now quantify evil, and they will be lobbying state legislatures to adopt their "depravity ratings" for use by courts determining whether to impose the death penalty on convicted murderers. Long seen as a subjective moral term, evil, two recent studies of criminal personalities claim, can now be measured objectively. "People say evil is like pornography — they know it when they see it, but can debate whether or when it is harmful," Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist and professor at New York University, told the London Telegraph. "This is not true. We are finding widespread agreement about what is evil..." Welner's depravity scale is based on contributions of thousands of people who contributed their understanding of evil to a website. Democratic Underground? Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-02-21 |
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