Medical Ethics and the CIA’s Secret Detention Program
Reports this week indicate that the Obama administration is leaning towards keeping secret some information on the controversial interrogation tactics used in the CIA’s detention program. But the administration can’t keep secret recently divulged evidence suggesting that fourteen detainees were tortured in that detention program in the presence of doctors, which would constitute a significant breach of medical ethics.
A long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross on the treatment of fourteen “high value detainees” held in the secret CIA detention program from the time of their arrest until their transfer to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006 concluded that the behavior of medical professionals overseeing the treatment of the prisoners “constituted a gross breach of medical ethics and, in some cases, amounted to participation in torture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
The “strictly confidential” report, recently released by journalist Mark Danner to the New York Review of Books, presented testimony from prisoners that medical professionals working for the CIA were present during controversial waterboarding practices. The report also documents that medical professionals were in the room when prisoners were exposed to frigid cells, beaten and slammed into walls, forced to stand naked and shackled to the wall for days at a time, and confined in a small box.
The Red Cross found that in addition to merely being present during the utilization of these interrogation methods—methods which the Red Cross calls “torture”—medical professionals were allegedly often directly involved in the ill-treatment of detainees. For example, the detainees allege that medical professionals monitored the blood-oxygen level of detainees while they were undergoing waterboarding, often directing interrogators to continue, adjust, or stop the treatment. The report claims that the actions of the medical professionals constituted a major breach of medical ethics, and that the entire interrogation program represented an egregious violation of international law.
It is unclear if the “medical professionals” involved in the interrogations were licensed physicians, psychologists, C.I.A officials trained in basic medical care, or something else altogether. Nonetheless, medical professionals should be expected to uphold, without exception, the widely accepted principles of medical ethics that guide their relationships with patients, including prisoners: beneficence, non-maleficence, and dignity, among others. Monitoring and assisting in the waterboarding, beating, and shackling of detainees is a clear violation of these sacred principles, which are neither optional nor mere guidelines. They are rigid and inviolable axioms that must strictly govern the behavior of medical professionals, whether they work in a private hospital, prison, or CIA detention facility.
While the Obama administration has unfortunately decided to withhold information on some sensitive CIA interrogation tactics, it is promising that the administration has taken steps to halt the perpetration of the gross international law and human rights violations that became all too common over the past eight years. Human rights and national security are not mutually exclusive – in fact, respecting human rights, medical ethics, and international law is likely to make us safer, not more vulnerable, in the long run.
Comments on this article
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the Science Progress Privacy Policy and agree to the Science Progress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
