Representative Press Blog

US Physicians and Medical Staff Collaborated in Torture Scandal

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

"The detaining power's health personnel are the first and often the last line of defence 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.

One example from a Human Rights Watch report is from when 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.

British study outlines role of doctors and medics in Iraq prison abuses
Study outlines doctors', medics' role in Iraq prison abuses