Analysis: Doctors a Part of Iraq Abuse

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Analysis: Doctors a Part of Iraq Abuse

 

Thu Aug 19, 7:06 PM ET

 

 

By EMMA ROSS, AP Medical Writer

 

LONDON - Doctors working for the U.S. military in Iraq

(news - web sites) collaborated with interrogators in

the abuse of detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison,

profoundly breaching medical ethics and human rights,

a bioethicist charges in The Lancet medical journal.

 

In a scathing analysis of the behavior of military

doctors, nurses and medics, University of Minnesota

professor Steven Miles calls for a reform of military

medicine and an official investigation into the role

played by physicians and other medical staff in the

torture scandal.

 

He cites evidence that doctors or medics falsified

death certificates to cover up homicides, hid evidence

of beatings and revived a prisoner so he could be

further tortured. No reports of abuses were initiated

by medical personnel until the official investigation

into Abu Ghraib began, he found.

 

" The medical system collaborated with designing and

implementing psychologically and physically coercive

interrogations, " Miles said in this week's edition of

Lancet. " Army officials stated that a physician and a

psychiatrist helped design, approve and monitor

interrogations at Abu Ghraib. "

 

The analysis does not shed light on how many doctors

were involved or how widespread the problem of medical

complicity was, aspects that Miles said he is now

investigating.

 

A U.S. military spokesman said the incidents recounted

by Miles came primarily from the Pentagon (news - web

sites)'s own investigation of the abuses.

 

" Many of these cases remain under investigation and

charges will be brought against any individual where

there is evidence of abuse, " said Lt. Col. Barry

Johnson, U.S. Army spokesman for detainee operations

in Iraq.

 

In a related matter, two military officials in

Washington said Thursday that a high-level Army

inquiry will cite medical personnel who knew of abuse

at Abu Ghraib but did not report it up the chain of

command. The inquiry also will criticize senior U.S.

commanders for a lack of leadership that allowed

abuses to occur, but finds no evidence they ordered

the abuse, said the sources, who spoke condition of

anonymity.

 

Photographs of prisoners being abused and humiliated

by U.S. troops in Iraq have sparked worldwide

condemnation. Although the conduct of soldiers has

been scrutinized, the role of medical staff in the

scandal has received relatively little attention.

 

" The detaining power's health personnel are the first

and often the last line of defense against human

rights abuses. Their failure to assume that role

emphasizes to the prisoner how utterly beyond humane

appeal they are, " Miles said in a telephone interview

with The Associated Press.

 

He said military medicine reform needs to be enshrined

in international law and include more clout for

military medical staff in the defense of human rights.

 

Miles gathered evidence from U.S. congressional

hearings, sworn statements of detainees and soldiers,

medical journal accounts and press reports to build a

picture of physician complicity, and in isolated cases

active participation by medical personnel in abuse at

the Baghdad prison, as well as in Afghanistan (news -

web sites) and at the Guantanamo Bay detention center

in Cuba.

 

In one example, cited in a sworn statement from an Abu

Ghraib detainee, a prisoner collapsed and was

apparently unconscious after a beating. Medical staff

revived the detainee and left, allowing the abuse to

continue, Miles reported.

 

Depositions from two detainees at Abu Ghraib described

an incident in which a doctor allowed a medically

untrained guard to sew up a prisoner's wound.

 

A military police officer reported a medic inserted an

intravenous tube into the corpse of a detainee who

died while being tortured to create evidence that he

was alive at the hospital, Miles said.

 

At prisons in both Iraq and Afghanistan, " Physicians

routinely attributed detainee deaths on death

certificates to heart attacks, heat stroke or natural

causes without noting the unnatural (cause) of the

death, " Miles wrote.

 

He cites an example from a Human Rights Watch report

in which soldiers tied a beaten detainee to the top of

his cell door and gagged him. The death certificate

indicated he died of " natural causes ... during his

sleep. " However, after media coverage, the Pentagon

changed the cause of death to homicide by blunt force

injuries and suffocation.

 

 

 

Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist at Harvard

University-affiliated Cambridge Hospital who wrote a

book on doctors and torture in Nazi Germany, called

the Lancet analysis " a very good, detailed description

of violations of medical policies involving medical

ethics. "

 

In a July 29 New England Journal of Medicine (news -

web sites) essay, Lifton urged medics to report what

they know about American torture at Abu Ghraib and

other prisons, and said in an interview Thursday that

a non-military-led investigation of doctors' conduct

is needed.

 

" They made choices, " he said. " No doctor would have

been physically abused or put to death if he or she

tried to interrupt that torture. It would have taken

courage, but it was a choice they had. "

 

The World Medical Association, an umbrella group for

national medical associations, reiterated its policy

of condemning any doctor's involvement in abuse or

torture of detainees.

 

In an editorial comment, The Lancet condemned the

behavior of the doctors, saying that despite dual

loyalties, they are doctors first and soldiers second.

 

" Health care workers should now break their silence, "

the journal said. " Those who were involved or

witnessed ill-treatment need to give a full and

accurate account of events at Abu Ghraib and

Guantanamo Bay. Those who are still in positions where

dual commitments prevent them from putting the rights

of their patients above other interests should protest

loudly and refuse cooperation with authorities. "

 

Johnson, the Army spokesman, said the U.S. military

" will allow no actions that undermine or compromise

medical professionals' commitment to caring for the

sick and wounded, regardless of who they are or their

circumstances. "

 

In his article, Miles dismissed Pentagon officials

putting the blame for the abuse on poor training,

understaffing, racism, pressure to procure

intelligence and the stress of war.

 

" Fundamentally, however, the stage for these offenses

was set by policies that were lax or permissive with

regard to human rights abuses, and a military command

that was inattentive to human rights, " Miles

concluded.