An article published in the April 26 issue of PLoS Medicine details yet another instance of medical complicity in torture. Based on research by non-governmental medical experts of records of nine detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison, the authors conclude, “Medical doctors and mental health personnel assigned to the U.S. Department of Defense neglected and/or concealed medical evidence of intentional harm.”
As the article notes, although complicity by health professionals in U.S. torture design and implementation has been documented, this study reveals for the first time the role of health professionals assigned to provide routine medical and mental health care to the detainees. When the detainees presented complaints related to torture, the doctors did nothing to bring the torture to a stop.
When detainees sought care for such injuries as broken bones, lacerations and nerve damage, their assigned doctors “failed to inquire about and/or document the causes of the physical injuries and psychological symptoms that they observed.” When they sought care for depression, hallucinations, nightmares or suicidal thoughts, mental health professionals diagnosed personality disorders, psychosis and “routine stressors of confinement.” One detainee seeking care for such complaints was told, “’[You] … need to relax when guards are being more aggressive.’”
When subjected to sleep deprivation, extreme cold or heat, beatings, painful positions, forced nudity, rape, mock execution or asphyxiation with water, the victim should relax! When detainees carried out hunger strikes to protest this ongoing torture, they were restrained and force-fed through nasogastric tubes. This was the “care” these medical professionals gave.
In an accompanying editorial, PLoS Medicine editors point out that despite President Obama’s 2008 campaign pledge to shut down Gitmo, 172 detainees remain incarcerated there. The editors charge that doctors at Gitmo violated the American Medical Association’s Code of Ethics, which obligates doctors to “’whenever possible, strive to change situations in which torture is practiced or the potential for torture is great.’”
Even if these doctors risked retaliation for upholding this ethical principle, they cannot be absolved of their obligation to do so. Although this article reveals particularly shameful conduct, medical training and practice in the U.S. fosters a culture in which doctors look the other way at all sorts of inhumane acts, be they war, oppression, injustice or other remediable causes of human suffering.
Contrast this article about U.S. doctors’ complicity in torture with one about Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) published in the March 2011 issue of Monthly Review. That article describes ELAM’s “dedication to creating a new medicine.” Medicine as a capitalist enterprise engenders complicity with the system from which its practitioners benefit. A new medicine rejects complicity not only in torture, but also in the capitalist system.
