Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Guantanamo. Medici militari implicati in abusi?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51032-2005Jan5.html
Army Doctors Implicated in Abuse
Medical Workers Helped Tailor Interrogations of Detainees, Article Says
By Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 6, 2005; Page A08
U.S. Army doctors violated the Geneva Conventions by helping intelligence
officers carry out abusive interrogations at military detention centers,
perhaps participating in torture, according to an article in today's edition
of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Medical personnel helped tailor interrogations to the physical and mental
conditions of individual detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S.
military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to the article. It says
that medical workers gave interrogators access to patient medical files, and
that psychiatrists and other physicians collaborated with interrogators and
guards who, in turn, deprived detainees of sleep, restricted them to diets
of bread and water and exposed them to extreme heat and cold.
"Clearly, the medical personnel who helped to develop and execute aggressive
counter-resistance plans thereby breached the laws of war," says the
four-page article labeled "Perspective."
"The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature, but there
is probable cause for suspecting it."
The article was written by M. Gregg Bloche, a law professor at Georgetown
University and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, and by
Jonathan H. Marks, a London barrister who is a bioethics fellow at
Georgetown University Law Center and Johns Hopkins. It is based on
interviews with more than two dozen military personnel and on a review of
documents released to the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom
of Information Act.
Pentagon officials said yesterday that the article is inaccurate and
misrepresents military officials' positions and acts. Doctors did not
violate the Geneva Conventions, said William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant
secretary of defense for health affairs. Some functioned as consultants to
intelligence officers but never acted unethically, he said.
"We have no evidence of maltreatment by physicians, or of physicians
participating in torture or torturous activity," he said. "We just do not
have evidence of that."
The article in the medical journal purports to add new facts to the public
record and put others in context. But it is most significant because it adds
to a chorus of concern expressed by respected medical institutions, said
Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of
Pennsylvania.
"The New England Journal of Medicine plays a unique role in serving as a
moral beacon for the health profession; when they take it on, it's
important," Caplan said.
Leonard S. Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, an
advocacy organization based in Cambridge, Mass., added: "This underscores
the pressing need for a transparent and full investigation, which the
Pentagon has consistently refused to initiate."
The Geneva Conventions forbid the use of abusive techniques in questioning
prisoners of war. Tactics used in Iraq and Cuba were "transparently
coercive," the article says. It discloses that the Army's surgeon general is
developing new rules for medical personnel who work with detainees, and its
authors call for a broad, public effort to develop new guidelines for
military doctors.
"The therapeutic mission is the profession's primary role and the core of
physicians' professional identity. If this mission and identity are to be
preserved, there are some things doctors must not do," the article says.
"They should not be party to interrogation practices contrary to human
rights law or the laws of war."
Doctors also have a duty to document abuse and report it to commanders, the
article says, concluding that "by these standards, military medicine has
fallen short."
Defense Department officials challenged that assessment, saying that
military doctors are always expected to act ethically. Doctors who function
as caregivers fulfill a different role than doctors who consult with
intelligence officers, they said. Often, the consulting doctors help ensure
that interrogators do not inadvertently endanger a detainee's health, they
said.
"We always expect a physician to behave ethically in any circumstance,"
Winkenwerder said. "There is no question about that. We just would take
offense to the implication that there are situations or circumstances where
we would advise people to look the other way."
He rejected implications that medical personnel control interrogations, and
said detainees' medical records are treated in manner similar to those of
U.S. prison inmates. When incarcerated, he said, "the individual does not
have a complete and absolute right to privacy of medical information. That
is the standard in prisons."
The article is the most recent criticizing the medical treatment of
detainees. In July, an essay in the New England Journal of Medicine urged
U.S. military doctors to come forward with any evidence of recent abuse. In
August, the British medical journal the Lancet charged that medical workers
at Abu Ghraib had falsified death certificates and did not report injuries
from beatings. After an inspection at Guantanamo Bay last summer, the
International Committee of the Red Cross charged that methods used there
were tantamount to torture.
The Washington Post reported in June that military interrogators at
Guantanamo Bay had been given access to the medical records of individual
prisoners despite repeated objections from the Red Cross, a breach of
patient confidentiality that ethicists said violated international medical
standards. The article in the New England Journal of Medicine says that
interrogators in Iraq also had access to prisoners' medical files.
The article says that David N. Tornberg, deputy assistant secretary of
defense for clinical and program policy, confirmed in an interview that
interrogation units at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay had access to detainee
medical records. In fact, interrogators "couldn't conduct their job" without
such access, Tornberg is quoted as saying.
He and other military officials argue in the article that when a doctor
participates in interrogation, he is acting as a combatant, so the
Hippocratic oath does not apply.
Tornberg is on leave and was unavailable to comment yesterday. Winkenwerder
said that he believes Tornberg's comments were misrepresented in the
article, and that they did not represent the Defense Department's views.

but there is probable cause for suspecting it."
Cioe' un articolo di pura fantasia senza alcuna prova a sostegno :)
-Stefano

 The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature,
Very premature, in fact.
Tb
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