reasons for needing --allow-secret-key-import?

[Frank Tobin]

I'm curious as to why the --allow-secret-key-import option is needed.
>From what I can tell, could only be a problem if imported secret keys were
automatically trusted (which would be bad), and would as such indicate a
problem in GnuPG.  Importing untrusted secret keys should not be an issue.

Or is the --allow-secret-key-import simply an evil hack to work around a
GnuPG flaw?

-- 
Frank Tobin		http://www.neverending.org/~ftobin/