"..."
I can't imagine trusting this guy, or anyone willing to work with him, with ... anything, let alone implicit and explicit access to medical information, until he presumably grows up a bit a decade or two from now.
Of course, I'm also one of those members of the MIT community who believe Aaron Swartz should have done some serious time in Club Fed (> a year, i.e. felony), am not in the least swayed by his exit from a mess entirely of his own making ("If you aren't willing to do the time, don't do the crime.", incalculably stupid for someone who suffered from depression), and am rather perturbed by all those taking the side of a criminal again MIT to the point of committing even more crimes against the community, like this one.
To answer the rest of your points, it comes down to character, and his actions and most especially his responses afterwords conclusively demonstrate he isn't worthy of the trust which is required for this sort of access to people's health information.
I don't "dismiss his work" so much as "don't trust him or anyone of such poor judgement to work with him" with a service handling sensitive stuff.
People like you give "hackers" and at least the newer generations of MIT undergraduates a bad name.
ADDED: Your fellow members of the MIT community aren't too impressed with all this including your apology: http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N13/fakeemail.html?comments#comment...
AND MORE ADDED: And now reading them, you did this during "hell week" (midterms)? Were you even still a student then???
FINAL ADDITION: can you show us the slightest evidence you've learned anything but "Don't get caught next time" (assuming the speculation that this was more a PR stunt than anything else per some of the comments in The Tech is false)?
Disclosures: I'm class of 1983 and have close non-academic ties to Course 6.