U.S. doctors linked to POW `torture' Guantanamo medical records misused

[G_j]

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1119477015095&call_pageid=9683321

Jun. 23, 2005. 06:25 AM

U.S. doctors linked to POW `torture'
Guantanamo medical records misused
Basis of interrogators' strategy: Report


TANYA TALAGA AND KAREN PALMER
STAFF REPORTERS

Medical records compiled by doctors caring for prisoners at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay are being tapped to design more effective interrogation techniques, says an explosive new report.

Doctors, nurses and medics caring for the approximately 600 prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Cuba are required to provide health information to military and CIA interrogators, according to the report in the respected New England Journal of Medicine.

"Since late 2003, psychiatrists and psychologists (at Guantanamo) have been part of a strategy that employs extreme stress, combined with behaviour-shaping rewards, to extract actionable intelligence from resistant captives," it states.

Such tactics are considered torture by many authorities, the authors note.

..more..

[lazarus]

1. paging Dr Mengele

Dr Mengele, white courtesy phone....

[gratuitous]

2. Hey! Support the doctors you commies!

Here these poor doctors and nurses are, young, inexperienced, hundreds of miles from home, just doing a job. They can't disobey orders, they didn't know what they were getting into, you can't hold them accountable or responsible for their actions.

Hmmmm. Nope, it still sounds like a stupid excuse.

[tavalon]

12. Nope

With the exception of the medics, these are officers and medical professionals and they have broken the hippocratic oath and deserve to be brought up in front of the medical and nursing boards. In a sea of gray, this isn't a gray area.

[DBoon]

3. but we are never supposed to use the word "Nazi"

medical experiments to determine more effective torture techniques hmm...

[slamthecrank]

4. Burgess

<i>"...have been part of a strategy that employs extreme stress, combined with behaviour-shaping rewards, to extract actionable intelligence from resistant captives," it states.</i>

YAY!!! :sarcasm:

It's a Clockwork Orange.

<img src="">

[Gothmog]

5. This is from the New England Journal of Medicine

This is going to be hard for some of the conservatives to ignore.

[G_j]

6. well, they should apologize!!

:sarcasm:

[cyberpj]

7. kicked and nominated - in fact, this could be an ACLU issue too. nt.

[drduffy]

8. If psychologists are involved in torture

they should then be removed from membership in the American Psychological Association and investigated by their respective state boards of psychology for ethical violations. 'Do no harm' applies to psychologists as well as physicians. This is a travesty that must be fought by all of the professionals in both fields.

clinical psychologist

[libodem]

9. How can they even be thinking about building a bigger

better facility. The whole thing is a mess. Having Doctors involved is outright creepy not to mention the 'do no harm' oath. I don't think it specifies to what kind of humanity. This whole bizarre episode needs to be exposed as quickly as possible and the prisoners who are eligible need to be rescued. How much Intel can they have after 3 years. They must be torturing them for sport by now.

[flying dog]

15. forget it!

doctors have been ignoring the "do no harm" oath for years! They always find some way to rationalize it but the end result is the same. Someone gets hurt but they say that it is for the "greater good."

[Judi Lynn]

10. Don't see how they identify themselves with healing, after this.

They are technicians, nothing more.

[AlienGirl]

11. This is so sickening, and so sad

And of course none of these bastards will ever face charges, just like the doctors who dosed unknowing US citizens with radiation for experimental purposes, or the psychiatrists who secretly doped GIs with LSD to see what happened (one jumped out a window and died)...None of them ever faced charges, or even lost their licenses. It'll never end.

Tucker

[powwowdancer]

13. the ugly americans

We've become the evil empire. There's a mood in this country that's just plain wrong, and I can't begin to understand it. I've had debates with otherwise sane and rational human beings to the effect that torture is wrong. I'm absolutely shamed for my country that this laissez faire attitude about torturing others, regardless of what they may or may not be be guilty of, is just plain, well... evil. I predicted this shit way before the war started to a republican friend with words to the effect that, "You don't pull outta the international war crimes tribunal unless you plan on committing some." He agreed. Surprise. I predicted it, yet I am still shocked by it. Oh, the dichotomy! Throwing money at powerful organizations like MoveOn and Amnesty International is one way to help to be sure, but for those of us who aren't particularly financially solvent, (and thanks to le shrub, that's more and more of us every day), you can take up slack by writing letters to the editor, (I do editorial cartoons for my tiny little hometown newspaper), maintaining obstinate resistance in the face of some pontificating nut, setting records straight, signing petitions and generally calling neo-fascists every time they blather on and on with their giddy, jingoistic neo-con boilerplate. I think the one thing that has totally sapped my will to resist, (albeit only temporarily), is while yes, we do have Nazi's running concentration camps in the new american reich, there has yet to pop up one Shindler. Lots of groups have spoken out, much like we do here, but where are the angels of mercy? Where are the heroes? Can we blame the mainstream media for not telling us about them? Are they non-existent? Who in their right mind would even want to be a "hero" of conscience in the age of sacrificial slaughter of whistle blowers? I guess I've come full circle back to my original musing; why is ameristan, even headed up by the evangeliban, OK with torture? I told the same republican friend (again, BEFORE the war), "Look, you don't get to be the good guy and wear the white hat if at the end of the day you're cutting off heads in the ville!" Remember, this was before the war and the obscene spectacle of public decapitations... I was exaggerating, or so I thought, for effect. And while we've not cut off any heads that we the people are aware of, (yet), we're no better morally, when we trade torture and murder for torture and murder. It's just a matter of differing methods. But alas, the same madness.

powwowdancer out

<>

[Pow_Wow]

14. great post, thank you

-----setting records straight

welcome to DU !! :thumbsup:

[ninkasi]

16. Welcome to DU

and to an excellent post. I look forward to seeing you more often here.

[Must_B_Free]

17. 'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101.

I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'

The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.

'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.'

He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.

'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'

A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of the mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into him. His bowels seemed to turn to water.

'You can't do that!' he cried out in a high cracked voice. 'You couldn't, you couldn't! It's impossible.'

'Do you remember,' said O'Brien, 'the moment of panic that used to occur in your dreams? There was a wall of blackness in front of you, and a roaring sound in your ears. There was something terrible on the other side of the wall. You knew that you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open. It was the rats that were on the other side of the wall.'

'O'Brien!' said Winston, making an effort to control his voice. 'You know this is not necessary. What is it that you want me to do?'

O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected. He looked thoughtfully into the distance, as though he were addressing an audience somewhere behind Winston's back.

'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable -- something that cannot be contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you.

[FlemingsGhost]

19. "1984," George Orwell

Some folks might not know ...

[Judi Lynn]

18. Here's the AFP article. They must be afraid to share much of the info.

Not nearly as well-done as the original poster's article:

Medical secrets violated at Guantanamo

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Interrogators are systematically accessing the medical records of prisoners at the US naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, exploiting detainees' vulnerability, two jurists claim in a report released Wednesday.

Citing internal military documents, Gregg Bloche, a Georgetown University law professor, and Jonathan Marks, a barrister at Matrix Chambers in London, published their findings in the July 7 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Up until early 2003, and possibly even afterwards, interrogators personally were able to access medical records of US-held detainees, according to their report.

"Health information has been routinely available to behavioural science consultants and others who are responsible for crafting and carrying out interrogation strategies," it said
(snip/...)

http://www.brunet.bn/news/bb/fri/jun24w34.htm

[LynnTheDem]

20. NAZI TECHNIQUE.

And that's just FACT.