"Doctors were complicit in the torture strategy from the start"

From Doctors Without Ethics by Justine Sharrock :

... For more than five decades, starting with the prosecution of Nazi doctors during the Nuremberg trials, the Pentagon ordered its physicians to abide by international norms. The World Medical Association (WMA), which counts the American Medical Association (AMA) as a member, had issued clear directives: Doctors could not assist in torture or cruelty of any kind, and were duty bound to report abuses they witnessed. The United Nations later clarified that the rules apply to all medical personnel, from surgeon to nurse to psychologist to lowly medic. Even now, the Army's Military Medical Ethics textbook echoes the Geneva Conventions, noting that a doctor-warrior's priority is always “physician first.”

But even as the nation debates disbarment for the Bush administration lawyers who green-lighted torture, the medical profession has dealt reluctantly, if at all, with its own involvement. “The indifference is shocking,” says retired Army Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, a rare outspoken critic among military doctors. “Some civilian doctors are appalled, but many say, 'It doesn't affect my life; I'm not involved.' ”

Doctors were complicit in the torture strategy from the start. In December 2002 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued a directive allowing interrogators to withhold medical care in nonemergency situations—men with injuries including gunshot wounds were denied treatment as a way to make them talk. The directive was soon revoked, but the practice continued.

Four months later, Rumsfeld ordered that doctors had to certify prisoners “medically and operationally” suitable for torture and be present for the sessions. At Abu Ghraib, interrogations had to be preapproved by a physician and a psychiatrist. “They have the final say as to what is implemented,” Colonel Thomas M. Pappas told military investigators.

The CIA received similar advice in 2002 and 2005 from the Justice Department, whose torture memos recommended that physicians and psychologists be present for the interrogation of “high value al-Qaida detainees.” These doctors, the lawyers argued, would see to it that interrogators didn't torture detainees by intentionally inflicting “serious or permanent harm.”

But it was in June 2005 that the Pentagon delivered its biggest ethical bombshell, a memo that allowed doctors to participate in torture and share medical records with interrogators so long as the detainee in question wasn't officially their patient. The directive's author, physician and top Pentagon health official William Winkenwerder Jr., received an award from the AMA that year for outstanding contributions “to the betterment of the public health.” ...

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