Pentagon, CIA rebuked
Torture task force finds doctors
are still used in unethical ways
U.S. government doctors are still being used for unethical activities, despite steps taken to improve treatment of Guantanamo detainees, a private team of medical professionals charges.

Since September 11, 2001, the Pentagon and CIA improperly have demanded that U.S. military and intelligence agency health professionals collaborate in intelligence gathering and security practices in a way that inflicted severe harm on detainees in U.S. custody, according to the Task Force on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers.

Though steps have been taken to improve the lot of detainees, the task force says, nevertheless the Pentagon “continues to follow policies that undermine standards of professional conduct” for interrogation, hunger strikes, and reporting abuse.

Among practices the task force charges are still occurring:

• Requiring doctors and nurses to participate in the force-feeding of detainees, including forced extensive bodily restraints for up to two hours twice a day.
• Requiring medical professionals to provide interrogators access to the medical and psychological records of captives for exploitation during interrogations.
• Pressuring doctors to ignore the root cause -- torture -- of much detainee suffering.

By the word "torture," the group means the infliction of severe physical and psychological stress.

“Abuse of detainees, and health professional participation in this practice, is not behind us as a country,” said Leonard Rubenstein, a task force member and legal scholar at Johns Hopkins. “Force-feeding by physicians in violation of ethical standards is illustrative of a much broader legacy in which medical professionalism has been undermined.”

The task force recommends a full investigation of medical practices in detention facilities and public release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s review of CIA practices. It also calls for promulgation of rules that harmonize medical and psychological practices with ethical prohibitions on participation in interrogation, use of medical records for interrogation, force feeding, and abuse reporting.

Statement on misuse of doctors
http://www.imapny.org/medicine_as_a_profession/interrogationtorture-and-dual-loyalty