Um, Derb, allow me to dissent from your view of the medical profession. As the son, nephew, cousin, grandson (both sides of the family), great-nephew, and great grandson of doctors, I may, of course, be biased.Speaking more generally, the reason for the dissonance is, of course, that doctors are presumed, ex officio as it were, to be humanitarian. When a lawyer (Lenin, say, or Robespierre) turns out to be a tyrant, no-one is very surprised, but a doctor, well…

I will make no comment about the discipline in which Stalin was trained.