Interrogation advice from CIA docs unethical
By Kristina Fiore
Physicians working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) suffered severe ethical lapses in providing advice on enhanced interrogation techniques, two researchers say.
The doctors merely established threshold exposure limits, rather than taking into account whether the techniques caused mental or physical pain, according to Leonard S. Rubenstein, JD, of Johns Hopkins, and Stephen N. Xenakis, MD, of the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences.
They authored a commentary on the subject in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
“This medical participation in enhanced interrogation represents a failure by the physicians involved, and by the [CIA’s Office of Medical Services] institutionally, to uphold ethical medical values,” they wrote.
Rubenstein and Xenakis based their commentary on documents released by the Obama administration in 2009 that revealed CIA physicians, psychologists, and other health professionals had “important roles in enhanced interrogation.”
The CIA’s enhanced interrogation program began in 2002, and it was designed to maximize a detainee’s feelings of vulnerability and helplessness.
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