See "Vile, Vile Pedophile" http://slate.msn.com/id/2 093582/
Is child molesting a sickness or a crime?
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Magazine, Posted Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004, at 4:17 PM PT

Again, and for all the wrong reasons, we can't take our eyes off Michael Jackson. Whether or not the allegations are substantiated, the question is in the air: Is pedophilia a disease to be treated, or a crime to be punished? Are people who seduce minors sick or evil? Our current legal and medical systems blur both views. We call for the most draconian punishments (life imprisonment, castration, permanent exile) precisely because we view these acts as morally heinous, yet also driven by uncontrollable biological urges.

If sex with children is truly the product of freely made moral choices, then we should deal with it through the criminal justice system. But if it is a genetically over-determined impulse, an uncontrollable urge nestled in our DNA, then punishing pedophiles must be morally wrong. As science - and culture - increasingly medicalizes bad behavior, finding a neurological component to everything from alcoholism to youth violence, we run the parallel risks of either absolving everyone for everything, or punishing "criminals" who are no guiltier than cancer patients.

What science has revealed about the moral/medical roots of pedophiles is, of course, ambiguous.