PHYSICIANS & PSYCHOLOGISTS HELPED CIA BREAK THE LAW
Washington Post - The role of health professionals [in CIA torture] as described in the documents has prompted a renewed outcry from ethicists who say the conduct of psychologists and supervising physicians violated basic standards of their professions.
Their names are among the few details censored in the long-concealed Bush administration memos, but the documents show a steady stream of psychologists, physicians and other health officials who both kept detainees alive and actively participated in designing the interrogation program and monitoring its implementation. Their presence also enabled the government to argue that the interrogations did not include torture.
Most of the psychologists were contract employees of the CIA, according to intelligence officials familiar with the program.
"The health professionals involved in the CIA program broke the law and shame the bedrock ethical traditions of medicine and psychology," said Frank Donaghue, chief executive of Physicians for Human Rights, an international advocacy group made up of physicians opposed to torture. "All psychologists and physicians found to be involved in the torture of detainees must lose their license and never be allowed to practice again."
Their names are among the few details censored in the long-concealed Bush administration memos, but the documents show a steady stream of psychologists, physicians and other health officials who both kept detainees alive and actively participated in designing the interrogation program and monitoring its implementation. Their presence also enabled the government to argue that the interrogations did not include torture.
Most of the psychologists were contract employees of the CIA, according to intelligence officials familiar with the program.
"The health professionals involved in the CIA program broke the law and shame the bedrock ethical traditions of medicine and psychology," said Frank Donaghue, chief executive of Physicians for Human Rights, an international advocacy group made up of physicians opposed to torture. "All psychologists and physicians found to be involved in the torture of detainees must lose their license and never be allowed to practice again."
posted by TPR | 9:33 PM
1 Comments:
Any healthcare professional involved in supporting torture should be struck off the licence register and their credentials rescinded, because they obviously didn't learn the very first and most basic ethical lesson, namely to do no harm.
The only ethical thing they could have done is to have blown the whistle on the torturers, loudly and unceasingly.
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