[chrispenycate]

I suspect that, when all the cards are counted, more damage will be discovered to have been done for motives which seemed beyond criticism at the time than for greedy, selfish ones.
Take now. The most important problem, and the one from which most of the others stem, is an excess of human beings. And where did this population growth that is too fast for social mores to catch up with it originate? In the desire of the medical profession to alleviate human suffering. The most laudable of sentiments causing the most difficult of situations and, in the long run, self defeating as there are now more humans to suffer.
Certainly individual greed, and the desire to avoid any loss of personal comfort (traditional "evil" motives), is adding to the final payment, but the root cause is excess of humanity.
So, if I released a virus which sterilised ninety percent of humans, I'd be hailed as a saviour, right? By the time medical science had worked out how to eliminate the effects (at least in rich countries) the baby ploomp would have given a chance to stabilise or reverse desertification, to discover that, just as an army requires fewer officers than soldiers a society requires fewer administrators than administrated. (And could get by very nicely with fewer lawyers, fewer politicians and fewer bureaucrats; still, I'm not sure any of those could be retrained to work)
A bit of a "Greybeard" scenario; but anyone featured in a novel attempting to do that would be immediately classed as "evil", however pure their motives were.
Can something which gives beneficial final results be "evil", no matter what the original intentions? And can we condemn the doctors who, by introducing asepsis and saving millions of lives have created the present crisis?
I don't see how good and evil can be judged until all the results are in, and we'll none of us live to see that.