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Doctors damned! What Hippocratic Oath?

Doctors are there to help people who are sick, physically and mentally.  What then to make of the various medicos so closely involved with the torturing of "prisoners" of the CIA?   Not much, say a group of medicos who have issued a damning indictment about their colleagues involved in or associated with the CIA's torturing activities.

"A group of doctors and ethicists has released a searing report (pdf) slamming medical professionals for playing an "essential" role in the CIA's torture program, thereby violating "the most fundamental duty of the healing professions" and potentially committing crimes against humanity.

Published by Physicians for Human Rights, the analysis comes a week after the release of the partially-redacted executive summary (pdf) of the Senate report on the CIA's widespread torture program—which includes water-boarding, sleep deprivation, killing by hypothermia, and the act euphemistically referred to as rectal feeding.

"Doctors and psychologists working for the U.S. government engaged in the brutal and systematic torture of detainees," said Dr. Vincent Iacopino, PHR senior medical advisor and a co-author of the analysis. "Health professionals who participated in these crimes betrayed the most fundamental duty of the healing professions—to do no harm. They must be held accountable in order to restore trust in our professions and ensure this never happens again."

Doctors, physicians assistants, and psychologists violated "core ethical principles" of the profession, including the obligation to "protect the lives and health of patients under their care from harm and brutality," according to the PHR review.

These betrayals included "designing, directing, and profiting from the torture program," as well as "intentionally inflicting harm on detainees," the report charges. The medical community also enabled "U.S. Department of Justice Lawyers to create a fiction of 'safe, legal and effective' interrogation practices."



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