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Violations of medical ethics by our military
By Howard Brody
Contributor
Published May 22, 2007
The press reported April 10 that prisoners in a new unit at Guantanamo Bay were mounting a hunger strikes to protest conditions. The U.S. military responded that the strike was losing ground and that, at the time, 13 prisoners were being force-fed.
This is just the latest example of unethical behavior by military medical personnel since Sept. 11, 2001. The fact that there has not been a huge protest among both U.S. physicians and the American public is a source of major international embarrassment for the United States.
It is a clear-cut violation of international medical ethics to force-feed hunger-striking prisoners. The American Medical Association is a signatory to the world codes of medical ethics that condemn this practice.
It is also a gross violation of international medical ethics for physicians to participate in or observe torture or degrading treatment of prisoners and not report it to authorities.
Yet military medical personnel continue to be engaged in planning and carrying out types of interrogation that deliberately employ techniques that the international community labels as humiliating and degrading, as well as health-threatening.
One Guantanamo prisoner interrogated in 2002-03 was deprived of sleep and exposed to an air conditioner turned up so high that he had to be hospitalized for hypothermia.
Medical personnel monitored him continuously during this interrogation (www.bioethics. net/journal/j_articles.php?aid =1140).
Some will say I’m being unpatriotic and failing to “support our troops.”
All present and former military physicians with whom I have spoken see it differently.
They are outraged that their good reputation is being sullied by this behavior.
It’s been made quite clear that the military leadership has never supported violations or revisions of the Geneva Convention — which has the force of law in the United States and is written into military field procedures.
Playing fast and loose with Geneva, saying that something isn’t really torture because we say it isn’t, has come from civilian Pentagon and administration officials, and not from the military.
Last year, both the AMA and the American Psychiatric Association issued re-statements of their ethical principles, making it clear that the behavior reported in these cases is unacceptable.
They now need to go beyond these statements and demand forcefully a full investigation of the role of military medical personnel in all questionable treatment of detainees.
The only so-called investigation to date by the Pentagon was basically a whitewash, denying that any breaches occurred.
Personnel interviewed for that investigation could have been prosecuted if they admitted any wrongdoing—not a very good method to find out the real truth of what happened.
It’s bad enough that so many of us are willing to run away from the moral high ground so fast. Medical personnel should not be leading that charge.
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