Medical-experimentation allegations spur new calls for torture inquest

WASHINGTON (ABP) — New allegations that physicians working for the United States government engaged in medical experimentation on terrorism suspects has led a group of religious leaders to, once again, demand that President Obama convene a high-profile panel to investigate the subject.

If the allegations are investigated and proven, they could constitute violations of international ethical and legal standards that were put in place in response to the horrific experiments that Nazi doctors carried out on prisoners during the Holocaust.

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture called for a formal federal inquiry into the George W. Bush administration’s practices in interrogating detainees captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The calls came in response to the release of a report by Physicians for Human Rights detailing allegations of medical experimentation on detainees submitted to what supporters call “enhanced interrogation techniques” and what opponents label torture.

“We have adamantly opposed and consistently spoken out against U.S.-sponsored torture. Torture is immoral and abhorrent, violating the teachings of all our religious traditions,” said a June 7 statement from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. “Just as adamantly, we now condemn these alleged acts of illegal and immoral experimentation. Separate and distinct from the torture, such medical experiments could themselves constitute war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.”

The Physicians for Human Rights report alleges that doctors monitored, studied and gathered information on detainees subjected to at least two interrogation techniques that government officials have acknowledged they used after 9/11: sleep deprivation and the simulated-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

“This activity on multiple levels was a violation of professional ethics,” said Scott Allen, the report’s main medical author and co-director of the Brown University Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, in a June 7 conference call with reporters. “It all goes back to the bad deal some doctors appear to have made with administration lawyers where the lawyers, in effect, said, ‘We’ll say this is not torture if you doctors keep it safe.’

“By its nature, torture can’t be kept safe.”

The report — based on information the researchers gleaned from redacted CIA and military documents — says government doctors collected data on the techniques in order to help administration lawyers craft guidelines for future interrogation sessions. The guidelines would help the interrogators avoid crossing a line into illegal torture, as defined by Bush lawyers.

For instance, the report notes, CIA officials used medical data gathered from past interrogations and advice from medical professionals to experiment in using salt water in waterboarding sessions. The experiment was an attempt to decrease the likelihood that prisoners would suffer hyperhydration (or “water poisoning”) from ingesting excessive amounts of fresh water.

Such data-gathering and experimentation itself is both unethical and illegal, the report’s authors contended.

“A core principle of medical ethics is to do no harm. When it comes to torture, medical professionals have done profound harm. This report proposes that this harm includes unethical and illegal research,” said Allen Keller, a medical professor at New York University and director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. “As a scientist and a physician that cares for torture victims, I find these acts untenable; they call for a full investigation.”

While Obama rescinded the most controversial of the Bush-era interrogation policies and his Justice Department appointed a special prosecutor to probe alleged CIA interrogation abuses, NRCAT members and other torture opponents have repeatedly said Obama hasn’t gone far enough to investigate the abuses. They renewed their calls for the president to appoint a special panel of inquiry to expose the truth about the interrogation techniques.

“These revelations are profoundly disturbing and raise for us the question of what more remains hidden,” said the NRCAT press release. “The spiritual health of our nation will continue to suffer until the full truth opens a path to the justice and healing that our nation so desperately needs.”

Physicians for Human Rights’ Allen noted that the group’s allegations are based on government documents that were “heavily redacted, heavily blocked out” before they were declassified.

“This evidence may well be the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

–Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.

Previous ABP stories:

Torture opponents renew calls for inquest after release of CIA report (8/25/2009)

Religious leaders call for inquiry into U.S. use of torture (6/16/2009)

Read more:

Physicians For Human Rights reports on torture/enhanced interrogation techniques

NRCAT video on medical-experimentation allegations