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Bush, Cheney May Face Prosecution For Medical Experiments On Detainees
Evidence Indicates that the Bush Administration Conducted Experiments and Research on Detainees to Design Torture Techniques and Create Legal Cover
Illegal Activity Would Violate Nuremberg Code and Could Open Door to Prosecution
(Cambridge, MA) In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals’ involvement in the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques. The PHR report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture.
This evidence indicating apparent research and experimentation on detainees opens the door to potential additional legal liability for the CIA and Bush-era officials. There is no publicly available evidence that the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel determined that the alleged experimentation and research performed on detainees was lawful, as it did with the “enhanced” techniques themselves.
“The CIA appears to have broken all accepted legal and ethical standards put in place since the Second World War to protect prisoners from being the subjects of experimentation,” said Frank Donaghue, PHR’s Chief Executive Officer. “Not only are these alleged acts gross violations of human rights law, they are a grave affront to America’s core values.”
Physicians for Human Rights demands that President Obama direct the Attorney General to investigate these allegations, and if a crime is found to have been committed, prosecute those responsible. Additionally, Congress must immediately amend the War Crimes Act (WCA) to remove changes made to the WCA in 2006 by the Bush Administration that allow a more permissive definition of the crime of illegal experimentation on detainees in US custody. The more lenient 2006 language of the WCA was made retroactive to all acts committed by US personnel since 1997.
“In their attempt to justify the war crime of torture, the CIA appears to have committed another alleged war crime – illegal experimentation on prisoners,” said Nathaniel A. Raymond, Director of PHR’s Campaign Against Torture and lead report author. “Justice Department lawyers appear to never have assessed the lawfulness of the alleged research on detainees in CIA custody, despite how essential it appears to have been to their legal cover for torture.”
PHR’s report, Experiments in Torture, is relevant to present-day national security interrogations, as well as Bush-era detainee treatment policies. As recently as February, 2010, President Obama’s then director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, disclosed that the US had established an elite interrogation unit that will conduct “scientific research” to improve the questioning of suspected terrorists. Admiral Blair declined to provide important details about this effort.
“If health professionals participated in unethical human subject research and experimentation they should be held to account,” stated Scott A. Allen, MD, a medical advisor to Physicians for Human Rights and lead medical author of the report. “Any health professional who violates their ethical codes by employing their professional expertise to calibrate and study the infliction of harm disgraces the health profession and makes a mockery of the practice of medicine.”
Several prominent individuals and organizations in addition to PHR will file a complaint this week with the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) and call for an OHRP investigation of the CIA’s Office of Medical Services.
The PHR report indicates that there is evidence that health professionals engaged in research on detainees that violates the Geneva Conventions, The Common Rule, the Nuremberg Code and other international and domestic prohibitions against illegal human subject research and experimentation. Declassified government documents indicate that:
- Research and medical experimentation on detainees was used to measure the effects of large- volume waterboarding and adjust the procedure according to the results. After medical monitoring and advice, the CIA experimentally added saline, in an attempt to prevent putting detainees in a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of large amounts of plain water. The report observes: “‘Waterboarding 2.0′ was the product of the CIA’s developing and field-testing an intentionally harmful practice, using systematic medical monitoring and the application of subsequent generalizable knowledge.”
- Health professionals monitored sleep deprivation on more than a dozen detainees in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. This research was apparently used to monitor and assess the effects of varying levels of sleep deprivation to support legal definitions of torture and to plan future sleep deprivation techniques.
- Health professionals appear to have analyzed data, based on their observations of 25 detainees who were subjected to individual and combined applications of “enhanced” interrogation techniques, to determine whether one type of application over another would increase the subject’s “susceptibility to severe pain.” The alleged research appears to have been undertaken only to assess the legality of the “enhanced” interrogation tactics and to guide future application of the techniques.
Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program is the most in-depth expert review to date of the legal and medical ethics issues concerning health professionals’ involvement in researching, designing and supervising the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program. The Experiments in Torture report is the result of six months of investigation and the review of thousands of pages of government documents. It has been peer-reviewed by outside experts in the medical, biomedical and research ethics fields, legal experts, health professionals and experts in the treatment of torture survivors.
The lead author for this report was Nathaniel Raymond, Director of the Campaign Against Torture, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the lead medical author was Scott Allen, MD, Co-Director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University and Medical Advisor to PHR. They were joined in its writing by Vincent Iacopino, MD, PhD, PHR Senior Medical Advisor; Allen Keller, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, Director, Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture; Stephen Soldz, PhD, President-elect of Psychologists for Social Responsibility and Director of the Center for Research, Evaluation and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis; Steven Reisner, PhD, PHR Advisor on Ethics and Psychology; and John Bradshaw, JD, PHR Chief Policy Officer and Director of PHR’s Washington Office.
The report was extensively peer reviewed by leading experts in related medical, legal, ethical and governmental fields addressed in the document.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) mobilizes the health professions to advance the health and dignity of all people by protecting human rights. As a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, PHR shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.
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Posted by Gordon Duff on Jun 7 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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I totally agree that Bush and Cheney SHOULD be prosecuted for their part in war crimes. What is the Geneva Convention all about ? I not only want them punished
for the illegal interrogations, but I feel they should be held accountable for
the over 4,000 US service mens and womens lives lost in Iraq, as well as the rest of the Coalition lives lost and the many, many innocent Iraqui citizens that were
“collateral damage”. Those two LIARS should be jailed for their crimes. They turned the Iraq “war” in to another Vietnam in..all of the lives lost for basically nothing. Let’s throw Rumsfeldt, Rove and all of the responsible parties to the
wolves.
Semper Fi…A grunt from Nam
Thank you Democracy for pushing Bush in the Bush, hello Human Rights when are you going to prosecute Dick and the Clan for the Chainsaw massacre?
Good job exposing Bush, Cheney et al for their responsibility in violating the international law of Geneva and Nuremberg. Bugliosi has developed a solid case to prosecute Bush et al for murder.
That is good info on them, but don’t hold your breath til it happens. IMO, there will not be much done to jail or fine them. This crap has gone on for years, long before Bush an some after
I think we should insure the good health and wellness of all Guantanamo detainees by submitting them to full-body nerve conduction studies. We don’t want any residual illnesses to be pointed back at us — that would put as at blame. After all, we can’t even handle the Veteran damage we now have, let alone those people who want to kill us. Now, I want MD neurologists present to make sure all perfect American standards are used. No screwups or screw arounds. Just like the U.S. Medicos did to my wife, before they concluded, “oh yeah, her neck really is broken. No wonder her arms and legs don’t move right.”
Who knows, besides really helping these detainees — most of whom are living better than we might make some wonderful social and military advances in the process of studying levitation.
Screw all of you! You’re lucky I’m not President. Normally nice Texas Grunt.
oops, sorry about the sentence mess up. It should be — “most of whom are living better than they ever have on the sunny, south western Cuba beach.”
I’m still grouchy though. Had to go to the VA today.
TG
It ain’t gonna happen. No one associated with the 9/11 inside job will ever see the inside of a courtroom, not as long as the USA is being controlled by a foreign power.
The traitors behind 9/11 realize that if just one winds up in the docket, and gets a sentence, he’ll or she’ll start singing like a canary and thw whole sordid mess will be exposed.
Whether what Bush or Cheney did is right or wrong is not what is important to my moral compass. What bothers me is that if it were a member of the military’s lower rank member, that came even close to doing as such it would not take very long to be hung out to dry. There have been many in the military that were doing their job but ended up being accused of all types of crimes. No problem? Yes it is a problem. There are different Rules of Engagement and that in itself is wrong. One in particular that happened recently was the high ranking member of the Al Quiada that was killed. In the process his wife and children were killed in the same action. The mission was approved by whom, and carried out by whom, and the “collateral damage” was approved by whom?
Weren’t 3 Navy Seals brought to Courtsmartial for supposedly giving a POW a fat lip? Just my humble opinion. Blackcoat.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707?printable=true¤t