CIA Made Govt Doctors Torture Suspected Terrorists After 9/11
Photo Credit: 9/11 photos/flickrA national task force’s review of post-9/11 actions by medical professionals working with U.S. military and intelligence agencies concluded doctors violated their code of ethics by torturing detainees suspected of terrorism.
The 19-member Task Force on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers found medical doctors and psychologists, heeding instruction from the Department of Defense and the CIA, waterboarded and force-fed suspects, as well as deprived them of sleep, The Guardian reports.
“The American public has a right to know that the covenant with its physicians to follow professional, ethical expectations is firm regardless of where they serve,” said Dr. Gerald Thomson, a member of the task force and a professor emeritus at Columbia University in New York City.
The report, “Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the War on Terror,” said government-hired healthcare workers “designed and participated in cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment and torture of detainees” after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. The report further states military and intelligence officials told the workers the “first do no harm” clause in the Hippocratic Oath was to be disregarded because the subjects were not patients.
“It’s clear that in the name of national security, the military trumped that covenant, and physicians were transformed into agents of the military and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics and practice,” Thomson said. “We have a responsibility to make sure this never happens again.”
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