is empathy a choice?

I will share a link to a NYTimes piece that offers some allegedly scientific data that has some alleged scientists declaring empathy who actually believe empathy is a moral failure, as if being cerebral and unemotional is better than allowing one's self to feel the emotion of empathy. Some of these knuckleheads actually argue that empathy is not an emotion.

Here's the link. The article challenges me and I disagree with much of it but I am always open to interesting exchanges of thought, from from knuckleheads hiding behind the collective hunches known as science:  Is empathy a choice?

I believe, indeed I am certain, that empathy is a natural emotion. When humans dissociate from feelings of empathy they begin to slide down the slope of morality, dissociating from their own humanity and from their own feelings so they are free to do unkind, unjust, violent, criminal, corrupt or just plain wrong things. Adolph Eichmann, the top administrative architect of the Holocaust's efficient slaughter of millions of humans, took pride in his bureaucatic efficiency and dissociated himself from any feelings about the end result of his 'good work as a bureaucrat. The great German Jewish philosopher, who escaped a death camp, got her PhD under anti-semite Heidegger (and was his lover for a time) coined the phrase "the banality of evil".

A person chooses not to feel empathy, it does not mean empathy is not a natural, healthy feeling. The choice to ignore one's feeling of empathy is banal, and it is the first step to taking actions that cause harm to others.