See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

there is no excuse whatsoever for collaborating in torture, particularly among members of the medical profession...

Health care workers in the U.S. military seem to have put their loyalty to the state above their duty to care for patients — and American regulatory bodies have done nothing to remedy the situation, said the letter that appeared in The Lancet [a prestigious British medical journal].

It was signed by some 260 people from 16 countries, nearly all of whom are doctors.

The letter compared the ongoing role of U.S. doctors working at Guantánamo, who have been accused of ignoring torture, to the South African doctors involved in the case of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who died while being detained by security police.

"The attitude of the U.S. medical establishment appears to be one of 'See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,'" the letter charged.

so, what are the docs accused of doing to provoke the rebuke...?

Guantánamo's reputation has been tarnished by hunger strikes and suicides. Detainees began refusing food at the prison in August 2005, although the number of prisoners on hunger strike has fluctuated. The forced feeding of detainees, who are strapped into restraint chairs and fed through tubes reaching down their throats, has been particularly controversial.

The letter's authors argued in The Lancet last year that the forced feeding was "degrading and unethical." Commentary published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in July called on doctors not to participate in the practice.

Military officials have described the hunger striking as a "voluntary fast" intended to draw international sympathy, and have praised the efforts of medical staff to keep the detainees alive as heroic.

the "voluntary fast" terminology is the same crap spin used to characterize detainee suicide attempts as acts of "assymetric warfare..." how have we sunk so low...?

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Psychologists: present at the interrogation

i posted on last week's american psychological association here and here...

evidently, their resolution has a loophole, and some folks - myself included - aren't too happy about it...

Central to the debate is the question "Are psychologists participating in torture?" While the Bush administration repeatedly denies that it uses torture, a leaked report of the International Committee of the Red Cross says certain U.S. methods used are "tantamount to torture."

At a fiery APA town hall meeting after the vote, Dr. Steven Reisner, one of the leading proponents of a moratorium, asked, "I want to know if passing this resolution prohibits psychologists from being involved in the enhanced interrogation techniques that the president of the United States authorized can take place at CIA black sites."

Defenders of the APA's position are clear: Psychologists need to be present at these interrogations to protect the prisoners, to ensure that the interrogators do not go over the line. Critics argue that psychologists are there to help interrogators push the line further and further, to consult with the interrogators on how best to break the prisoners.

Dr. Jeffrey Kaye, a psychologist with Survivors International, a torture survivors group, says there is a loophole: Psychologists cannot participate in harsh interrogations, but they can participate in harsh detention conditions. He said: "You see, they don't use sleep deprivation while they're interrogating you, they use it before they interrogate you, as part of the conditions of detention, to soften you up for the interrogation. So the winner today, and I'm sure their lawyers are very happy, is the CIA."

loophole-free, here's some folks who have their shit together...

The American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association both outright prohibit their members from participating in interrogations at locations where basic human rights are not guaranteed, like Guantanamo. These groups have been joined by others, like the American Translators Association and the Society for Ethnomusicology (since translation is essential in interrogations, and sustained, blaring music has been used as a form of torture).

it seems to me that avoiding even the mere POSSIBILITY of appearing to support torture would be of the highest priority... the american medical association (see their policy here) and the american psychiatric association (see their policy here - pdf) obviously get it...

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