Monday, 07 June 2010 20:26
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Illegal Activity Would Violate Nuremberg Code and Could Open Door to Prosecution
Press release from Physicians for Human Rights
In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals’involvement in the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program (EIP),Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates theBush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical humanexperimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody.
The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to providelegal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape futureprocedures and policies governing the use of the “enhanced”interrogation techniques.
The PHR report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged inthe crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to thepreviously disclosed crime of torture.
This evidence indicating apparent research and experimentation on detainees opens thedoor to potential additional legal liability for the CIA and Bush-eraofficials. There is no publicly available evidence that the Departmentof Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel determined that the allegedexperimentation and research performed on detainees was lawful, as itdid with the “enhanced” techniques themselves.
“The CIA appears to have broken all accepted legal and ethical standards put inplace since the Second World War to protect prisoners from being thesubjects of experimentation,” said Frank Donaghue, PHR’s ChiefExecutive Officer. “Not only are these alleged acts gross violations ofhuman rights law, they are a grave affront to America’s core values.”
Physicians for Human Rights demands that President Obama direct the Attorney Generalto investigate these allegations, and if a crime is found to have beencommitted, prosecute those responsible. Additionally, Congress mustimmediately amend the War Crimes Act (WCA) to remove changes made tothe WCA in 2006 by the Bush Administration that allow a more permissivedefinition of the crime of illegal experimentation on detainees in UScustody.
The more lenient 2006 language of the WCA was made retroactive to all acts committed by US personnel since 1997.
“In their attempt to justify the war crime of torture, the CIA appears to havecommitted another alleged war crime – illegal experimentation onprisoners,” said Nathaniel A. Raymond, Director of PHR’s CampaignAgainst Torture and lead report author. “Justice Department lawyersappear to never have assessed the lawfulness of the alleged research ondetainees in CIA custody, despite how essential it appears to have beento their legal cover for torture.”
PHR’s report, Experiments in Torture, is relevant to present-day national security interrogations, as well as Bush-era detainee treatment policies.
As recently as February, 2010, President Obama’s then director of nationalintelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, disclosed that the US hadestablished an elite interrogation unit that will conduct “scientificresearch” to improve the questioning of suspected terrorists. AdmiralBlair declined to provide important details about this effort.
“If health professionals participated in unethical human subject research andexperimentation they should be held to account,” stated Scott A. Allen,MD, a medical advisor to Physicians for Human Rights and lead medicalauthor of the report. “Any health professional who violates theirethical codes by employing their professional expertise to calibrateand study the infliction of harm disgraces the health profession andmakes a mockery of the practice of medicine.”
Several prominent individuals and organizations in addition to PHR will file acomplaint this week with the US Department of Health and HumanServices’ Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) and call for anOHRP investigation of the CIA’s Office of Medical Services.
The PHR report indicates that there is evidence that health professionals engaged inresearch on detainees that violates the Geneva Conventions, The CommonRule, the Nuremberg Code and other international and domesticprohibitions against illegal human subject research andexperimentation. Declassified government documents indicate that:
- Research and medical experimentation on detainees was used to measure theeffects of large- volume waterboarding and adjust the procedureaccording to the results. After medical monitoring and advice, the CIAexperimentally added saline, in an attempt to prevent putting detaineesin a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of large amounts ofplain water. The report observes: “‘Waterboarding 2.0’ was the productof the CIA’s developing and field-testing an intentionally harmfulpractice, using systematic medical monitoring and the application ofsubsequent generalizable knowledge.”
- Health professionals monitored sleep deprivation on more than a dozendetainees in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. This research wasapparently used to monitor and assess the effects of varying levels ofsleep deprivation to support legal definitions of torture and to planfuture sleep deprivation techniques.
- Health professionals appear to have analyzed data, based on their observationsof 25 detainees who were subjected to individual and combinedapplications of “enhanced” interrogation techniques, to determinewhether one type of application over another would increase thesubject’s “susceptibility to severe pain.” The alleged research appearsto have been undertaken only to assess the legality of the “enhanced”interrogation tactics and to guide future application of the techniques.
Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Programis the most in-depth expert review to date of the legal and medicalethics issues concerning health professionals’ involvement inresearching, designing and supervising the CIA’s “enhanced”interrogation program. The Experiments in Torturereport is the result of six months of investigation and the review ofthousands of pages of government documents. It has been peer-reviewedby outside experts in the medical, biomedical and research ethicsfields, legal experts, health professionals and experts in thetreatment of torture survivors.
The lead author for this report was Nathaniel Raymond, Director of the Campaign AgainstTorture, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the lead medical authorwas Scott Allen, MD, Co-Director of the Center for Prisoner Health andHuman Rights at Brown University and Medical Advisor to PHR. They werejoined in its writing by Vincent Iacopino, MD, PhD, PHR Senior MedicalAdvisor; Allen Keller, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, NYU Schoolof Medicine, Director, Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture;Stephen Soldz, PhD, President-elect of Psychologists for SocialResponsibility and Director of the Center for Research, Evaluation andProgram Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis;Steven Reisner, PhD, PHR Advisor on Ethics and Psychology; and JohnBradshaw, JD, PHR Chief Policy Officer and Director of PHR’s WashingtonOffice.
The report was extensively peer reviewed by leading experts in related medical, legal,ethical and governmental fields addressed in the document.
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