The human rights group Physicians for Human Rights released a new report yesterday detailing the role that health professionals played in interrogating and torturing inmates at Guantanamo Bay. The role of health professionals first came to light in a 2004 CIA report, but Physicians for Human Rights now claim that they played a much more central role than previously believed. The report, entitled “Aiding Torture: Health Professionals’ Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 CIA Inspector General’s Report”, alleges that American doctors and psychologists violated medical ethics and contributed to human rights abuses by “designing, implementing, and legitimizing a worldwide torture program.”
The report is sure to add more fuel to the ongoing debate on what action should be taken against those who participated in the torture of inmates. Under former President Bush, the interrogation program at Guantanamo was deemed legit and legal despite protests from the International Committee of the Red Cross and numerous human rights groups. But the revelation of role that medical professionals played in supervising interrogation techniques such as water boarding and sensory deprivation also reignites the debate over what should happen to doctors who participate in such programs.
The connection between doctors and human rights abuses committed by military and police is one that stretches throughout the twentieth century. Doctors and other medical professionals played a central role in aiding human rights abuses during World War II under both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. More recently, military dictatorships have made use of medical help in their torture programs, most notably in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. Allegations against doctors have also been made in apartheid South Africa, communist East Germany, and Turkey while under military rule. Yet despite the evidence that doctors and other medical professionals have often been called upon to witness and assist in torturing prisoners, very few have ever been judicially tried for their actions. Instead the matter has been largely left to the medical boards to deal with through professional sanctions, but even then there has not been a strong record of successful action against accused health professionals.
Following the exposure of the crimes committed by Nazi doctors during World War II, the World Medical Association adopted the Declaration of Geneva to serve as a more modern version of the Hippocratic Oath. Since its adoption in 1948, it has been revised several times but as it stands today, there eleven commitments that doctors take under the Declaration, two of which are worth mentioning here. Commitment eight of the Declaration states, “I will not permit considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient,” while commitment ten reads, “I will not use my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat.” It is because of commitments like these that we give our trust to doctors and generally hold them to a higher standard. But these are the exact values that doctors at Guantanamo Bay ignored, and despite the political ramifications they should be held accountable for violating not only the law but the duty to humanity they swore to uphold within their profession.
