u.s. doctors have spoken out

Doctors question Guantanamo ethics, Doctors have an ethical obligation to report torture

The presence of psychiatrists and psychologists during interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay naval base has raised ethics questions among US doctors, who demand respect for the Hippocratic oath.

The American Medical Association (AMA), which represents physicians in the United States, has asked its ethics committee to look at the matter and to "review the issue of physician participation in the interrogation of prisoners and detainees and to clearly delineate the boundaries of ethical practice".

An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine said that physicians and experts in behavioural sciences violated ethics by sitting in on interrogations at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where about 500 prisoners have been held without charges for more than two years.

The authors, Gregg Bloche and Jonathan Marks, said that since 2002, psychiatrists and psychologists had been involved in interrogations involving stress coupled with a rewards system to extract information from recalcitrant prisoners.

They said that medical files of the detainees at Guantanamo had been systematically used by interrogators to exploit their vulnerabilities, in violation of laws protecting medical privacy. ...

John McIntyre, a top official with the American Psychiatric Association, said, "Physicians' Hippocratic training and our profound ethical obligations bar participating in any form of cruel and degrading treatment."

"The American Psychiatric Association is firmly committed to using our medical expertise to help treat and heal those in our care. It is vital for physicians to have clear guidelines with respect to interrogation from the AMA, the nation's leading authority on the ethics of medical practice." ...
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