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CIA Health Care

Posted by ROBERT STEIN in At TMV.
Apr 18th, 2009 | Comments

The lawyers wrote the torture memos, but the medical profession was there to implement them.

According to the Washington Post, “documents show a steady stream of psychologists, physicians and other health officials who both kept detainees alive and actively participated in designing the interrogation program and monitoring its implementation…

“Most of the psychologists were contract employees of the CIA, according to intelligence officials familiar with the program.”

The Bush Administration was apparently as active in corrupting doctors as lawyers in violating AMA policies that physicians “must not be present when torture is used or threatened” and may treat detainees only “if doing so is in their best interest” and not just to monitor their health “so that torture can begin or continue.”

The Bush version of the Hippocratic Oath apparently interpreted health care as keeping patients alive and well enough to endure continuing abuse, an ethical position that would not have offended Dr. Josef Mengele of Nazi concentration camp fame.

MORE.

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Braindead

Now its finally clear to me why the left is angry at Bush for this supposed torture thing. The terrorists get Free medical and dental while the left does not.

Now it all makes sense.

kathyedits

I just finished reading the WaPo article and it's just horrifying. I mean, not that I didn't already know it was happening. The rationalizations used for involving medical professionals are so pathetic -- when doctors and psychologists help design torture programs it's okay because they are "authorized" to stop the torture if it gets "too harmful"? It's okay to advise CIA agents how to torture someone to the edge of death, or insanity, as long as they hold up their hand and say Stop! and make sure they're healthy enough to be tortured again?

Definitely, every one of these so-called professionals should lose their licenses and be barred from every practicing medicine again.

StockBoySF

"But Michael Gross, a professor at the University of Haifa in Israel and the author of "Bioethics and Armed Conflict: Moral Dilemmas of Medicine and Warfare," said that if physicians think particular harsh interrogation techniques do not constitute torture, there is no reason they should not participate.

"Physicians are faced with a hard dilemma," he said. "They have professional obligations to do no harm, but they also have a duty as a citizen to provide expertise to their government when the national security is at stake. In a national security crisis, I believe our duties as citizens take precedence."'

Well then. If these "pro-enhanced interrogation" people believe that enhanced interrogation procedures are acceptable becaue they do not cause severe harm or permanent damage I guess the magic question to ask them is, "Would you allow your son or daughter to undergo this treatment?

If the answer is no, that these people would not allow their children to be subjected to this treatment, then the "enhanced interrogation" procedure should not be done.

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