Psychologists criticised in CIA torture report

Michael Cook*

Two psychologists contracted by the CIA to create enhanced interrogation techniques for al-Qaeda detainees have come under fire for violating human rights and medical ethics. Although pseudonyms were used in the 480-page report published this week by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, it was clearly referring to Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, who were paid US$81 million for their work. . . .  Full Text 

Redefining the Practice of Medicine- Euthanasia in Quebec, Part 6: Participation in Killing

Abstract

Redefining the Practice of Medicine- Euthanasia in Quebec, Part 6: Participation in Killing

It appears that, even where euthanasia or assisted suicide is legal, the majority of physicians do not actually provide the services.  However, by establishing a purported legal “right” to euthanasia, ARELC generates a demand that physicians kill their patients, despite the high probability that a majority of physicians will not do so.

Often for purely pragmatic reasons, euthanasia supporters do not usually insist that an unwilling physician should be compelled to personally kill a patient.  Thus, the difficulty created by the law can be addressed by administrative measures that connect patients looking for euthanasia with the minority of physicians willing to provide it.  Nonetheless, physicians who object to euthanasia for reasons of conscience will likely be expected to facilitate access to the procedure by helping the patient find a colleague willing to provide it.

However, objecting physicians not only refuse to kill patients, but also often refuse to do anything that they believe makes them morally responsible for the killing.  This includes actions that indirectly support or facilitate it.  Hence, it is likely that most of the attacks on freedom of conscience resulting from ARELC will be preciptated, not by a refusal to kill directly, but by this kind of refusal to participate indirectly in killing.

The Criminal Code demonstrates that a physician who refuses to facilitate the killing of a patient because he does not want to be a culpable participant in killing is acting well within well-established moral and legal norms reflected in our criminal law.  Further, the polices of professional medical organizations that forbid physician participation in capital punishment, torture, and female genital cutting indicate that it is not unreasonable for objecting physicians to refuse to facilitate euthanasia even indirectly.

On the contrary: refusing to participate, even indirectly, in conduct believed to involve serious ethical violations or wrongdoing is not aberrant behaviour.  It is the response expected of physicians by professional bodies and regulators in order to avoid physician complicity in such procedures. [Full Text]

Complicity after the fact

Moral blindness becomes a virtue and necessity

US scientists were “accomplices after the fact” in Japanese doctors’ war crimes

Bioedge

Michael Cook*

All of contemporary bioethics springs from the Nuremberg Doctors Trial in 1947. Seven Nazi doctors and officials were hanged and nine received severe prison sentences for performing experiments on an estimated 25,000 prisoners in concentration camps without their consent. Only about 1,200 died but many were maimed and psychologically scarred.

So what did the US do to the hundreds of Japanese medical personnel who experimented on Chinese civilians and prisoners of war of many nationalities, including Chinese, Koreans, Russians, Australians, and Americans? They killed an estimated 3,000 people in the infamous Unit 731 in Harbin, in northeastern China before and during World War II – plus tens of thousands of civilians when they field-tested germ warfare. Many of the doctors were academics from Japan’s leading medical schools.
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Does medical education make physicians susceptible to participating in torture?

  • Craig Klugman* | . . . Medical education does not provide courses in moral courage, defying authority, or turning against the tide of one’s peers. In fact, medical education encourages group think, keeping your head down and knowing your place in the hierarchy, and seeking out the approval of your peers. . .
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Health professionals participated in cruelty and torture

Medical, Military, and Ethics Experts Say Health Professionals Designed and Participated in Cruel, Inhumane, and Degrading Treatment and Torture of Detainees

New York, NY — An independent panel of military, ethics, medical, public health, and legal experts today charged that U.S. military and intelligence agencies directed doctors and psychologists working in U.S. military detention centers to violate standard ethical principles and medical standards to avoid infliction of harm. The Task Force on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers (see attached) concludes that since September 11, 2001, the Department of Defense (DoD) and CIA improperly 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.

These practices included “designing, participating in, and enabling torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment” of detainees, according to the report. Although the DoD has taken steps to address some of these practices in recent years, including instituting a committee to review medical ethics concerns at Guantanamo Bay Prison, the Task Force says the changed roles for health professionals and anemic ethical standards adopted within the military remain in place. [Full report]