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Tortured Logic

 

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In this column, I want to focus on the morality and efficacy of torture more than the political and legal concerns. What does torturing people say about us as human beings, and how does it involve us as health professionals? And if doctors, nurses and psychologists torture people or participate in executions, how does that affect people's visceral perceptions and experiences of us as healers rather than as torturers? If we physicians are causing suffering rather than relieving it, and if we destroy lives rather than save them, what kind of corrosive effects does that create?

According to Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, "Torture can also compromise the integrity of health professionals." As Harvard psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine, "The participation of doctors [in torturing] can confer an aura of legitimacy."

There are important reasons why the most sacred medical oaths and doctrines, including the World Medical Association Declaration of Tokyo, prohibit doctors from participating in torture in any way. All physicians take the Hippocratic Oath, which states, "I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing."

In an op-ed column in The Washington Post, "The Stain of Torture," by Dr. Burton J. Lee II, former personal physician to President George H.W. Bush, the doctor wrote:

It's precisely because of my devotion to country, respect for our military and commitment to the ethics of the medical profession that I speak out against systematic, government-sanctioned torture and excessive abuse of prisoners during our war on terrorism. I am also deeply disturbed by the reported complicity in these abuses by military medical personnel. This extraordinary shift in policy and values is alien to my concept of modern-day America and of my government and profession. Military leaders have long been aware that torture inflicts lasting damage on both the victim and the torturer. The systematic infliction of torture engenders deep hatred and hostility that transcends generations. And it perverts the role of medical personnel from healers to instruments of abuse.

But according to Dr. David Tornberg, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs, (as quoted in the New England Journal of Medicine) a medical degree is not a "sacramental vow"--it is only a certification of skill. When a doctor participates in interrogation, "he's not functioning as a physician," so the Hippocratic Oath no longer applies. This makes no sense at all, since it is precisely because of the physicians' skills and training that they are asked to participate in torture. Worse, it debases and degrades the humanity of our profession and the sacred vows and oaths that we take. By speaking out against torture in all its forms, we can reclaim our role as healers.

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  • Posted By: suburbdweller @ 04/05/2008 12:16:09 PM

    Correction: A quick internet search reveals that roughly 110,000-120,000 Japanese Americans were interred by the United States during WWII (not millions as I stated earlier). Perhaps two thirds of those were American citizens.

  • Posted By: suburbdweller @ 04/05/2008 12:03:18 PM

    For a nation proud of its institutions of fairness and justice, it is unthinkable that Americans would exact, much less allow to be commonplace, acts of cruelty in her name. And yet, justified by fear and bigotry, we have found it easy to do just that. Again. How? Through the use of labels.

    By labeling someone an Islamic extremist or a terrorist these days, one can be instantly demoted from the ranks of those worthy of due process, habeus corpus, presumed innocence. Rightfully so? Perhaps. But how do you know someone is a terrorist? And how many Americans take that a step further? Watch in amazement at how easily Americans have been suckered into agreeing, with a wink and a nod, that the labels "Arab" and "Muslim" really are synonymous with "terrorist" and thus worthy of the same aforementioned demotion.

    Could one argue that torture is justified to thwart an imminent threat? Perhaps, but such scenarios are rare and short lived---quite possibly no one at Guantanamo ever possessed knowledge worthy of stirring the debate.

    Guantanamo prison is a huge, self-inflicted black eye on the image of a supposedly kinder & gentler nation. Yet it continues to operate, as it has for years now, fueled by the labelmakers in the White House, supported by all those other "conservative" Americans, all of whom will insist to their dying breath that their cause justifies the means, just like those who happily and in clear conscience canceled the rights and stripped away the property of an entire ethnic group of its fellow countrymen a few decades ago, taking them from their homes and putting them in concentration camps for no reason other than their heritage.

    I'm not referring to the Holocaust. I'm referring to the internment of millions of Japanese Americans in the wake of Pearl Harbor.

    Most Americans (not all) look back at those events and shake their heads in shame that we were capable of such acts. And yet today, at this very moment, our government is lashing out with the same blind fervor prevalent during WWII. Will we wait again until a new generation has emerged before we see the shamefulness of our current deeds?

  • Posted By: burbank @ 04/05/2008 4:47:53 AM

    Could torture be looked at another way? Not to be used as a means to obtain information about suspected enemy action, but rather as a means to exact revenge on an unseen and untouchable foe. Consider the actions of a sociopathic lust killer. In the highly evolved fantasy world in which he lives, he has total control over the various acts played out over and over again in his mind. After enough time has pased, he will ultimately act out those fantasies much to the detriment of the object of his desire. He does not go after the cause of his anger and fustration, but after a surrogate. Could this, then, explain the motive for torture? We cannot get Bin Laden, but we can get his minions. In trying to exact information, we exact revenge on a man that we cannot see or touch. And in doing so collect payment that is due on atrocities that have been committed against the innocent.

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