Under The Same Sun: Medical Personnel Complicit in Abu Ghraib Torture, says the Lancet

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August 20, 2004

Medical Personnel Complicit in Abu Ghraib Torture, says the Lancet

I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity; the health of my patient will be my first consideration. ... I shall not permit considerations of religion, nationality, race, party politics, or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient;

The Modern Hippocratic Oath
Adopted by the General Assembly of the World Medical Association at Geneva in 1948.

The prestigious medical journal The Lancet has just published a report about military medical establishment's complicity and participation in torture in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and elsewhere. According to the journal, U.S. military medical personnel helped design the torture, participated in it, issued blatantly false "natural cause" death certificates for people tortured to death, and even inserted fake IV catheters into corpses for purposes of cover-up -- "uh, he's not dead; he slipped and fell in the shower and we're just taking him to the hospital."

I don't think I can summarize the article with justice. Here's a depressing excerpt:

An Abu Ghraib prisoner's deposition reports the crutch that he used because of a broken leg was taken from him and his leg was beaten as he was ordered to renounce Islam. The same detainee told a guard that the prison doctor had told him to immobilise a badly injured shoulder; the guard's response was to suspend him from the shoulder.
The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations. Army officials stated that a physician and a psychiatrist helped design, approve, and monitor interrogations at Abu Ghraib. This echoes the Secretary of Defense's 2003 memo ordering interrogators to ensure that detainees are "medically and operationally evaluated as suitable" for interrogation plans. In one example of a compromised medically monitored interrogation, a detainee collapsed and was apparently unconscious after a beating, medical staff revived the detainee and left, and the abuse continued.22 There are isolated reports that medical personnel directly abused detainees. Two detainees' depositions describe an incident where a doctor allowed a medically untrained guard to suture a prisoner's lacertation from being beaten.

The medical system failed to accurately report illnesses and injuries. Abu Ghraib authorities did not notify families of deaths, sicknesses, or transfers to medical facilities as required by the Convention. A medic inserted a intravenous catheter into the corpse of a detainee who died under torture in order to create evidence that he was alive at the hospital. In another case, an Iraqi man, taken into custody by US soldiers was found months later by his family in an Iraqi hospital. He was comatose, had three skull fractures, a severe thumb fracture, and burns on the bottoms of his feet. An accompanying US medical report stated that heat stroke had triggered a heart attack that put him in a coma; it did not mention the injuries.

Death certificates of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq were falsified or their release or completion was delayed for months. Medical investigators either failed to investigate unexpected deaths of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan or performed cursory evaluations and physicians routinely attributed detainee deaths on death certificates to heart attacks, heat stroke, or natural causes without noting the unnatural aetiology of the death. In one example, soldiers tied a beaten detainee to the top of his cell door and gagged him. The death certificate indicated that he died of "natural causes . . . during his sleep." After news media coverage, the Pentagon revised the certificate to say that the death was a "homicide" caused by "blunt force injuries and asphyxia."

In November, 2003, Iraqi Major General Mowhoush's head was pushed into a sleeping bag while interrogators sat on his chest. He died; medics could not resuscitate him, and a surgeon stated that he died of natural causes. 6 months later, the Pentagon released a death certificate calling the death a homicide by asphyxia.42 Medical authorities allowed misleading information released by military authorities to go unchallenged for many months.24 In 2004, the US Secretary of Defense issued a stringent policy for death investigations.

Finally, although knowledge of torture and degrading treatment was widespread at Abu Ghraib and known to medical personnel, there is no report before the January 2004 Army investigation of military health personnel reporting abuse, degradation, or signs of torture.

Posted by zeynep at August 20, 2004 12:36 AM

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Comments

It looks like this is getting picked up by the majors.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6024748

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/08/19/doctors.torture/

Posted by: seth at August 20, 2004 09:36 AM

This is really pretty incredible. There isn't any limit to what we are willing to do in war, is there?

Posted by: Nik at August 21, 2004 10:40 PM

shades of Hitler

Posted by: brian at August 22, 2004 12:55 AM

This makes me so damn sick I can't think of anything to say. On a slightly different subject though I want to comment on the weapons the Iraqis are using. In the media they never seem to miss a chance to say that the "insugents" are armed with AK-47s and RPGs, even when the that info is totaly irelevent to the article. The obvious reason being that those weapons are non-American. Unfortunitly the photographers most not have gotten the word that "insugents" don't use American made weapons that of course are now very easily obtainable. Every picture I've seen that had a machine gun in it the "insugent" had a US M-60 machine gun. I guess maybe the media is worried that if US citizens knew that we were in effect arming the resistance they might not support the "war" or whatever we're supposed to call it now. In Vietnam something like 1/2 of the supplies and weapons sent there ended up in NVA or VC hands. Should we seriously expect anything different in Iraq?

Posted by: Terrible at August 22, 2004 07:06 AM

Posted by: texas holdem at March 13, 2005 04:40 PM

Under The Same Sun

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August 20, 2004

Medical Personnel Complicit in Abu Ghraib Torture, says the Lancet

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