The essential difference between placebos, homeopathic medicine and the fake bomb detector is that no matter how hard you believed the fake bomb detector worked, it didn't and couldn't. For it to work, the laws of physics would have to change. For medicines and placebos, you only have to affect the bits of physiology which are imperfectly understood.
I think you give homeopathic practitioners far more credit than they deserve. They know perfectly well, every one of them, that what they are selling is just water and sugar. They know that it does not have, and cannot possibly have, any actual chemical effects. They know that any improvements to patients' outcomes can only be down to chance or the placebo effect. And they know that they are charging people money cynically and under false pretences. They are con-men whose principal objective is to get away with it. So why on earth would you (or anyone) imagine otherwise? All this I took for granted when I raised the ethical issue, re-worded as: If the obviously dishonest actions of these con-men make a patient really feel better, by the placebo effect, can there be any possible moral justification thereby?
Some people who had intended to plant bombs may have been deterred by the knowledge that the "bomb detectors" were in use - after all, the bombers would not have known they were fake. For all we know, loads of bombings may have been deterred and lots of lives saved. A kind of virtual placebo, perhaps.
Good point. Hadn't thought of that. Though if McCormick tries to pull that one as some justification for his actions, he is an even sorrier individual (if that were possible) than he already appears.
Not enough. He'll be out after 6 or 7 and free to return to his mansions and cash, much of which is no doubt off-shore and impossible to get at. Meanwhile, the victims of his fraud are dead, maimed or in hospital. There really is no justice.
I note that the Old Bailey judge who sentenced McCormick was His Honour Judge Richard Hone QC. Richard had the rooms neighbouring mine while we were at Oxford, and in 1970 I remember him asking me to obtain certain substances for him. When I refused he was quite annoyed with me. How times change!
The 10 year sentence is the maximum provided by the Fraud Act 2006. It is unusual for the maximum to be imposed, but the judge decided it was justified in these exceptional circumstances. 10 years means he'll be out on licence in 5 years. Are you proposing the maximum sentence for fraud should be higher? What would you suggest? Confiscation proceedings are notoriously complicated, and it is difficult to achieve a just result, but I daresay the courts will try their best. I wonder if the convict will appeal against sentence?
I would say that yes, the max sentence for fraud should be higher, if it involved endangering people's lives, or even just ruining them. What about fraudsters who steal old people's savings (or anyone's savings)? Why should it be one thing to front up at a bank and steal money, and a different thing to steal it in another more subtle way? In the present case, what is disgusting is that the fraudster (not a "businessman") deliberately undermined people's safety. How would people feel if a fraudster sold defective motorcycle brakes which he knew would fail after x miles? Would 10 years feel a reasonable amount if death had ensued? Suppose the fake bomb detector had been sold in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles, how would people feel about it then? It's rather easy to apply different criteria to countries far away where most of us will never go.
i bought one of those from the market for a tenner....fkn useless thing..i was hoping to find some roman coins or do a spot of water diving...bleedin waste of money...
