'Big, striking horror:' US military doctors allowed torture of detainees, new study claims

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http://www.nbcnews.com/health/big-striking-horror-us-military-doctors-allowed-torture-detainees-new-8C11515107



In this 2006 file photo, military personnel transport a detainee on the grounds of the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba.

'Big, striking horror:' US military doctors allowed torture of detainees, new study claims
Bill Briggs
NBC News
7 hours ago

U.S. military doctors designed, enabled and engaged in the torture of suspected terrorists held at American detention centers during the past decade, violating globally recognized ethics and medical principles that bar physicians from inflicting harm, according to a study released Monday.

The medical personnel involved — physicians, psychiatrists and psychologists who work in military branches or for U.S. intelligence agencies — allowed “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment” of prisoners while acting at the direction of military leaders under both the Bush and Obama administrations, reports a 19-member independent task force of doctors, lawyers and ethics experts.

“This is a big, big striking horror,” said Dr. Gerald Thomson, professor of medicine emeritus at Columbia University and a member of the task force. The panel is supported by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP), a health care policy think tank based at Columbia that identifies itself as nonprofit and nonpartisan.

“This covenant between society and medicine has been around for a long, long time — patient first, community first, society first, not national security, necessarily,” Thomson said. “If we just ignore this and satisfy ourselves with the (thought that), ‘Well, they were trying to protect us,’ when it does happen again we’re all be complicit in that.”