Spoetnik
06-01-05, 20:01
Army Doctors Implicated in Abuse
Medical Workers Helped Tailor Interrogations of Detainees, Article Says
By Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writer
01/06/05 "Washington Post" -- U.S. Army doctors violated the Geneva Conventions by helping intelligence officers carry out abusive interrogations at military detention centers, perhaps participating in torture, according to an article in today's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Medical personnel helped tailor interrogations to the physical and mental conditions of individual detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to the article. It says that medical workers gave interrogators access to patient medical files, and that psychiatrists and other physicians collaborated with interrogators and guards who, in turn, deprived detainees of sleep, restricted them to diets of bread and water and exposed them to extreme heat and cold.
"Clearly, the medical personnel who helped to develop and execute aggressive counter-resistance plans thereby breached the laws of war," says the four-page article labeled "Perspective."
"The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature, but there is probable cause for suspecting it."
The article was written by M. Gregg Bloche, a law professor at Georgetown University and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, and by Jonathan H. Marks, a London barrister who is a bioethics fellow at Georgetown University Law Center and Johns Hopkins. It is based on interviews with more than two dozen military personnel and on a review of documents released to the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act.
Pentagon officials said yesterday that the article is inaccurate and misrepresents military officials' positions and acts. Doctors did not violate the Geneva Conventions, said William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Some functioned as consultants to intelligence officers but never acted unethically, he said.
"We have no evidence of maltreatment by physicians, or of physicians participating in torture or torturous activity," he said. "We just do not have evidence of that."
The article in the medical journal purports to add new facts to the public record and put others in context. But it is most significant because it adds to a chorus of concern expressed by respected medical institutions, said Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7629.htm
Medical Workers Helped Tailor Interrogations of Detainees, Article Says
By Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writer
01/06/05 "Washington Post" -- U.S. Army doctors violated the Geneva Conventions by helping intelligence officers carry out abusive interrogations at military detention centers, perhaps participating in torture, according to an article in today's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Medical personnel helped tailor interrogations to the physical and mental conditions of individual detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to the article. It says that medical workers gave interrogators access to patient medical files, and that psychiatrists and other physicians collaborated with interrogators and guards who, in turn, deprived detainees of sleep, restricted them to diets of bread and water and exposed them to extreme heat and cold.
"Clearly, the medical personnel who helped to develop and execute aggressive counter-resistance plans thereby breached the laws of war," says the four-page article labeled "Perspective."
"The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature, but there is probable cause for suspecting it."
The article was written by M. Gregg Bloche, a law professor at Georgetown University and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, and by Jonathan H. Marks, a London barrister who is a bioethics fellow at Georgetown University Law Center and Johns Hopkins. It is based on interviews with more than two dozen military personnel and on a review of documents released to the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act.
Pentagon officials said yesterday that the article is inaccurate and misrepresents military officials' positions and acts. Doctors did not violate the Geneva Conventions, said William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Some functioned as consultants to intelligence officers but never acted unethically, he said.
"We have no evidence of maltreatment by physicians, or of physicians participating in torture or torturous activity," he said. "We just do not have evidence of that."
The article in the medical journal purports to add new facts to the public record and put others in context. But it is most significant because it adds to a chorus of concern expressed by respected medical institutions, said Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7629.htm