Doctors Ending Torture: More Important than Tax on Plastic Surgery

Jeffrey Parks Buckeye Surgeon PHR

The Nobel prize winning NGO Physicians for Human Rights(PHR) has published a widely circulated white paper detailing “experiments” conducted by physicians and other medical personnel on detainees at Guantanamo. Read the paper. It’s a grisly, soul-sapping compendium of state-sanctioned, state-organized human experimentation.

Remember those OLC torture memos that war criminals John Yoo and Jay Bybee wrote, alleging that the US policy of “enhanced interrogation” was both legal and safe? Well, the “safety” of the techniques was determined based on results of “studies” conducted by medical personnel on actual human beings. The effects of waterboarding and extreme sleep deprivation and sustained severe pain were all meticulously recorded and studied. Conclusions were then drawn. Just like a happy little science project! Only instead of making acetaminophen in the lab and determining the yield of product (the only actual science experiment I remember from college), these criminals were distorting the scientific method for totalitarian, undemocratic purposes.

To wit:

1) Experimenters were able to conclude that saline was a far safer liquid to pour over the faces of restrained inmates, rather than pure water. The simulation of drowning wasn’t altered (thank god!) but the higher sodium concentration of saline helped prevent the unfortunate side effect of severe hyponatremia and subsequent brain edema seen with the forced swallowing of large amounts of pure water.

2) Clinical investigators determined that combination of techniques that cause severe pain did not lead to an overall increased susceptibility to the perception of severe pain (someone please feel free to interpet whatever the hell that means). Consequently, researchers felt comfortable recommending that Gitmo torturers could freely combine walling, stress positions, and other pain eliciting techniques. In other words, the detainee felt equally shitty whether you just rammed his head into a wall or combined that with forcing him to also stand on his right leg for three hours without moving.

3) Researchers concluded that sleep deprivation up to 180 hours (that’s about 8 days of sleeplessness for the math impaired) did not lead to any long term psychological or physical consequences. And then as long as you let the subject sleep uninterruptedly for 8 hours, you could resume another 180 hours of wakefulness! Sweet!

Yes, this happened in America. This is what even the Obama Administration defends to its core. We don’t look back in this country. We gaze only toward the future, wide eyed and full of hope. With our blinders on. No one is held accountable for lawlessness and immoral actions. We invade countries under false pretenses. We torture suspects. We detain indefinitely “suspicious Muslims” for years at a time only to release them without any charges. We send unmanned Predator drones into Pakistan and Afghanistan, strafing villages, collateral damage be damned. Our former President can smugly proclaim, “hell yeah I waterboarded KSM….and I’d do it all over again!”. We have government employed doctors who conducted illegal, immoral experiments on human subjects, not for some greater good, mind you, but to provide a sham scientific cover for the inhumane torture and abuse of completely subjugated prisoners.

Maybe the AMA could advocate for some transparency on this issue. I realize they are busy fighting the good fight for the doctor fix and against the special tax on plastic surgery procedures. But perhaps it would be beneficial to their moral standing and ethical credibility to update their statement on the torture doctors from April 2009…

Source: Medcity News Find this under "Physicians for Human Rights « MedCity News
Jun 16, 2010" ... The Nobel prize winning NGO Physicians for Human Rights ...
here where there is a place to read and leave comments.

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See initiation of this current dialogue - The Physicians for Human Rights Torture Papers GO here

Find related articles here and/or in COMMENTS below...Also Recent: Experiments in Torture: Action and Media Recap Physicians for Human Rights - By Ben Greenberg on June 15, 2010: Last Monday, June 7, PHR released Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Program to immediate, overwhelming response.

Upon release of the report, PHR issued a statement and held a press conference. In the first 24 hours, PHR received over 467 press mentions. Major press covering the story on day 1 included the New York Times, Nature, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Washington Independent, Scientific American and Alternet. The report was featured on the front page of the Daily Kos and Boing Boing—two of the most heavily trafficked blogs on the internet—as well as on the prestigious legal affairs blog, Balkinization, on the highly influential blog Hullabaloo, and on numerous other notable blogs, including - Firedoglake (multiple bloggers), Religion Dispatches, The American Prospect, On Faith (Washington Post) and Political Animal. News of the report also ran on numerous major network local TV and radio news shows around the country. NBC4 TV Washington, DC coverage of Experiments in Torture |

June 7, 2010 - On Tuesday, June 8, PHR’s report was the subject of the lead editorial of the New York Times. Day 2 coverage also included - The Nation, New York Observer, LA Times, New Scientist, Inter Press Service and fulsome treatments by bloggers Andrew Sullivan (at The Atlantic) and Glenn Greenwald (at Salon.com), who are both widely read and highly influential for new media and mainstream news, alike.

On Wednesday, PHR, along with 9 other groups submitted a formal complaint to the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP). We issued a new statement and held another press conference—and attracted a new round of press coverage, with at least 200 press outlets covering the story, including wire stories on AFP and AP and detailed reporting on The Great Beyond blog from Nature.com.

Our OHRP complaint was co-signed by Amnesty International USA, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Center for Constitutional Rights, Center for Victims of Torture, Human Rights Watch, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Network of Concerned Anthropologists and Psychologists for Social Responsibility.

Anyone can file an OHRP complaint, so we’ve opened ours to the public in cooperation with a number of our partner organizations. If you haven’t signed on yet, please do.

Also on Wednesday, the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who is chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a statement to blogger Jeff Kaye: “the findings of the new report from Physicians for Human Rights will be considered,” Feinstein said, in the Committee’s review of the CIA detention and interrogation program.

By the end of the week on Friday, PHR was mentioned nearly 900 times in press source and had over 9000 total downloads of Experiments in Torture. The report authors have been interviewed numerous times for print, radio and TV. We’ve posted a few of their appearances on The Torture Papers.

A number of outside academic experts have spoken supportively on the record about PHR’s evidence and the allegation of experimentation, including, Olivier Ribbelink, researcher at the Asser Institute in The Hague; Jonathan D. Moreno, a professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania; Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia; and Nancy Berlinger, a research scholar who studies clinical ethics at The Hastings Center in Garrison, New York.

See June 18, 2010 and earlier for some humor and some solid facts on RENDITION and torture complicity see this Jon Stewart Video and Serious Commentary on this leader's site and more from leader in seeking the end of Torture Complicity, Stephen Soldz - Plz GO here - to see the Blog of Stephen Soldz: Psychoanalyst, Psychologist, Researcher, and Activist - see his earlier and ongoing posts and comments = Dr. Stephen Soldz, President-Elect of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, at Press Conference Announcing the Filing - And find this on this same site: - Barbour: When research is torture - Ginny Barbour, Chief Editor of Plos Medicine discusses the new Physicians for Human Rights report on torture researh, Experiments in Torture. She concurs that the evidence strongly suggests that the CIA engaged in illegal and unethical experimentation on its prisoners. She understands the essential function of investigation and accountability. She endorses the idea of an Office of Human Research Protections investigation; and Rabbi David Saperstein's Stopping torture needs unswerving commitmentmment (Rabbi Saperstein is the director and counsel of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and explains the connection of "Never Again" and US torture:

Somewhat Older Items:

Editorial - Doctors Who Aid Torture - NYTimes.com
A physicians' group has raised important questions about the role of doctors in helping the CIA subject terrorism suspects to torture.
here

Letters - Tortured, Under the Eyes of a Doctor - NYTimes.com Jun 14, 2010 Re “Doctors Who Aid Torture” (editorial, June 8) GO here

Related to the above reference see RECAP of news related to the original Press Release from Physicians for Human Rights and the NYTimes editorial - GO
Mar 3, 2010 Your editorial “The Torture Lawyers” urges the American Bar ...here

Could a new UN resolution end doctors' participation in torture? A new UN resolution has the potential to fight torture and cruelty say experts in the British Medical Journal. here or GO here

US Doctors Experimenting in Torturing Detainees - Shades of Nazi's ...
Jun 10, 2010 ... US Doctors Experimenting in Torturing Detainees - Shades of Nazi's Dr. ... to healing torture survivors and ending the practice of torture. GO here

How Individuals Can Help End Torture?
Jun 7, 2010 07 min 34 sec ... Did CIA Doctors Test Torture Techniques on Prisoners? 01 min 32 sec: here (see more from the docs themselves in following article and in their human rights sites.) SEE related videos from this site as well.

MUCH Earlier:

Mike Whitney: The Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Aug 20, 2004 ... The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology. Gila Svirsky .... The Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib. By MIKE WHITNEY GO here

US doctors lobby for end to torture of terrorism suspects -- Roehr by B Roehr - 2006
Washington, DC Bob Roehr. Doctors and human rights activists in the United States have formed...here (SEARCH for B Roehr and US Doctors Lobby to End Torture)
Heidi Boghosian: Rx to End Torture

En General:

Torture is Wrong: Ending the policy which allows torture has become synonymous with Guantanamo ,most specifically doctors and psychologists (as well as lawyers) in facilitating torture...GO here