U.S. Military Physicians complicit in torture - cougarguard.com — unofficial BYU Cougars / LDS sports, football, basketball forum and message board

MikeWaters · 06-15-2007, 02:26 PM

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/extract/355/15/1624

Oath Betrayed: Torture,
Medical Complicity, and the War
on Terror
By Steven H. Miles. 220 pp., illustrated. New York, Random
House, 2006. $23.95. ISBN 1-4000-6578-X.
A 2004 posting of the “Interrogation
Rules of Engagement” at the Abu Ghraib military
prison stated that the following techniques
required the approval of the commanding general:
dietary and environmental manipulation,
“sleep adjustment, isolation for longer than 30
days, presence of military working dogs . . . sensory
deprivation, [and] stress positions.” A central
strategy of human rights work is to expose
and document violations of human dignity. Steven
Miles, the author of Oath Betrayed, is a physician,
bioethicist, and human rights activist who
has worked against torture in Turkey, the former
Soviet Union, South Africa, Cuba, and the United
States. He begins his discussion by asking, “Where
were the doctors and nurses at Abu Ghraib?” The
audience for the book is not confined to medical
professionals, however. The book grew from an
article on the same subject published in the August
21, 2004, issue of the Lancet, which drew a
large response from the international media. According
to Miles, the book is based on approxi-mately 35,000 pages of official documents, most
of them posted on the Internet. Miles writes that
although medical personnel in other countries
have a history of participating in acts of torture,
“such actions departed from the United States’
tradition of medical care for prisoners of war.” It
is a shocking story, even for readers who think
they have learned all they need to know from the
media about torture in U.S. military prisons.
Miles describes in detail the involvement of
U.S. military physicians, nurses, and medics in
the neglect, abuse, and torture of prisoners in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay. He describes
specifically the active, nontherapeutic role
U.S. military physicians played in advising interrogation
teams, examining prisoners before and
after interrogation, and condoning the use of
stress positions, sleep deprivation, isolation, and
threats. Even more disturbing, Miles documents
the deaths of prisoners under torture and physician
involvement in falsified death certificates.
He concludes that at least some U.S. military physicians,
whom he names whenever the available
records permit, violated basic tenets of medical
ethics by allowing three grave breaches of the Geneva
conventions: assisting in harsh and coercive
interrogations; failing to ensure that findings pertaining
to the cause of death were “reliably, truthfully,
and promptly communicated”; and failing
to “forcefully advocate for minimally adequate resources
to meet prisoners’ basic need for mental
health care, sanitation, tuberculosis treatment,
shelter from weapon fire, and in some cases medical
care.”
Miles calls for new policies, more transparency,
and more accountability for military medical
personnel and rightly asks the medical profession
to take the lead. Physicians can and should
clearly articulate and support medical ethics standards,
but physicians cannot reform government
policy and practices on their own. In the same
week that the book was published, the U.S. Supreme
Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, firmly repudiated
Bush administration policy and ruled
that common article 3 of the Geneva conventions
(which prohibits not only “cruel treatment and
torture” but also “humiliating and degrading treatment”)
applies to all prisoners in U.S. military
custody, regardless of their status.
Documentation should, of course, lead to action,
and the next steps should include an independent
investigation to determine how and why
these abuses occurred, the establishment of a system
to improve accountability, and the development
of a plan to prevent such abuses from recurring.
Of course, prisoners should be protected
from abuse, and as Miles notes, “clinicians are
frontline monitors for human rights abuses in
prisons.” But military physicians must also be
confident that they always have the legal authority
to place the medical interests of their patients
first. In this regard, the primary responsibility for
the corruption of military medical ethics rests in
civilian hands, especially those of lawyers in
both the White House and the Department of
Defense who wrote memos and instructions that
conflict with medical ethics, U.S. and international
law, and the advice of the Judge Advocate
General.
Oath Betrayed is a stellar example of human
rights work, but it could have been even better.
The book needs an index (a publisher’s note does
refer readers of this first printing to an online
index and promises inclusion of an index in future
printings), and the author should have documented
all Internet sources, an important consideration
in a book whose power comes from the
distillation of original government documents.
The explanation that some of the documents may
no longer be available on the Web exactly where
the author found them is insufficient, and the
author’s assurance that he has kept hard copies
that “are available for a copying fee to interested
researchers” is one that few readers will find useful.
The publisher should have insisted on posting
all of the book’s unpublished sources on an
accessible — and indexed — Web site.
Michael A. Grodin, M.D.
George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H.
Boston University School of Public Health
Boston, MA 02118
grodin@bu.edu

BarbaraGordon · 06-15-2007, 02:36 PM

That was when I first started reading more about what was going on at Guantanamo...when the physicians there started coming forward and saying, "listen, what they're asking us to do is a violation of medical ethics and our oath."

It is beyond comprehension to me that anyone would continue to defend Guantanamo.

MikeWaters · 06-15-2007, 02:40 PM

I'm glad that there are good men and women in the military who are saying "I don't give a damn what you are ordering me to do, I won't do it because it is wrong."

I can't tell you how proud I am of the military judge who refused to participate in Bush's kangaroo court.

There is a rebellion going on in the military, and it is about freaking time.

06-15-2007, 02:26 PM	#1
MikeWaters Demiurge Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 36,365	U.S. Military Physicians complicit in torture http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/extract/355/15/1624 Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror By Steven H. Miles. 220 pp., illustrated. New York, Random House, 2006. $23.95. ISBN 1-4000-6578-X. A 2004 posting of the “Interrogation Rules of Engagement” at the Abu Ghraib military prison stated that the following techniques required the approval of the commanding general: dietary and environmental manipulation, “sleep adjustment, isolation for longer than 30 days, presence of military working dogs . . . sensory deprivation, [and] stress positions.” A central strategy of human rights work is to expose and document violations of human dignity. Steven Miles, the author of Oath Betrayed, is a physician, bioethicist, and human rights activist who has worked against torture in Turkey, the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Cuba, and the United States. He begins his discussion by asking, “Where were the doctors and nurses at Abu Ghraib?” The audience for the book is not confined to medical professionals, however. The book grew from an article on the same subject published in the August 21, 2004, issue of the Lancet, which drew a large response from the international media. According to Miles, the book is based on approxi-mately 35,000 pages of official documents, most of them posted on the Internet. Miles writes that although medical personnel in other countries have a history of participating in acts of torture, “such actions departed from the United States’ tradition of medical care for prisoners of war.” It is a shocking story, even for readers who think they have learned all they need to know from the media about torture in U.S. military prisons. Miles describes in detail the involvement of U.S. military physicians, nurses, and medics in the neglect, abuse, and torture of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay. He describes specifically the active, nontherapeutic role U.S. military physicians played in advising interrogation teams, examining prisoners before and after interrogation, and condoning the use of stress positions, sleep deprivation, isolation, and threats. Even more disturbing, Miles documents the deaths of prisoners under torture and physician involvement in falsified death certificates. He concludes that at least some U.S. military physicians, whom he names whenever the available records permit, violated basic tenets of medical ethics by allowing three grave breaches of the Geneva conventions: assisting in harsh and coercive interrogations; failing to ensure that findings pertaining to the cause of death were “reliably, truthfully, and promptly communicated”; and failing to “forcefully advocate for minimally adequate resources to meet prisoners’ basic need for mental health care, sanitation, tuberculosis treatment, shelter from weapon fire, and in some cases medical care.” Miles calls for new policies, more transparency, and more accountability for military medical personnel and rightly asks the medical profession to take the lead. Physicians can and should clearly articulate and support medical ethics standards, but physicians cannot reform government policy and practices on their own. In the same week that the book was published, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, firmly repudiated Bush administration policy and ruled that common article 3 of the Geneva conventions (which prohibits not only “cruel treatment and torture” but also “humiliating and degrading treatment”) applies to all prisoners in U.S. military custody, regardless of their status. Documentation should, of course, lead to action, and the next steps should include an independent investigation to determine how and why these abuses occurred, the establishment of a system to improve accountability, and the development of a plan to prevent such abuses from recurring. Of course, prisoners should be protected from abuse, and as Miles notes, “clinicians are frontline monitors for human rights abuses in prisons.” But military physicians must also be confident that they always have the legal authority to place the medical interests of their patients first. In this regard, the primary responsibility for the corruption of military medical ethics rests in civilian hands, especially those of lawyers in both the White House and the Department of Defense who wrote memos and instructions that conflict with medical ethics, U.S. and international law, and the advice of the Judge Advocate General. Oath Betrayed is a stellar example of human rights work, but it could have been even better. The book needs an index (a publisher’s note does refer readers of this first printing to an online index and promises inclusion of an index in future printings), and the author should have documented all Internet sources, an important consideration in a book whose power comes from the distillation of original government documents. The explanation that some of the documents may no longer be available on the Web exactly where the author found them is insufficient, and the author’s assurance that he has kept hard copies that “are available for a copying fee to interested researchers” is one that few readers will find useful. The publisher should have insisted on posting all of the book’s unpublished sources on an accessible — and indexed — Web site. Michael A. Grodin, M.D. George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H. Boston University School of Public Health Boston, MA 02118 grodin@bu.edu

06-15-2007, 02:36 PM	#2
BarbaraGordon Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Gotham City Posts: 7,157	That was when I first started reading more about what was going on at Guantanamo...when the physicians there started coming forward and saying, "listen, what they're asking us to do is a violation of medical ethics and our oath." It is beyond comprehension to me that anyone would continue to defend Guantanamo.

06-15-2007, 02:40 PM	#3
MikeWaters Demiurge Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 36,365	I'm glad that there are good men and women in the military who are saying "I don't give a damn what you are ordering me to do, I won't do it because it is wrong." I can't tell you how proud I am of the military judge who refused to participate in Bush's kangaroo court. There is a rebellion going on in the military, and it is about freaking time.