Corruption of a Profession

Outlook: Doctors Complicit in Torture

Dr. Steven Miles
Professor, Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota
Monday, July 10, 2006; 12:30 PM

Dr. Steven Miles , professor at the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics, was online Monday, July 10, at 12:30 p.m. ET to discuss his Sunday Outlook article on medics that allowed the abuse of Guantanamo Bay detainees ( Medical Oaths Betrayed , ( Post, July 9, 2006 )). Miles says that "there were enough clinicians who were willing to be culpably ignorant, silent, or actively complicit to allow the abuses to continue without medical challenge." He is author of "Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror."

Arlington, Va.: I have long marveled at the remote statistical odds against all these "bad apples" "rouging" in such parallel ways in geographically disparate places (Cuba, Afghanistan and several sites in Iraq). The stories of physicians being routinely in the loop during our country's torture of those opposing our military incursions pretty much puts the final lie to the ridiculous notion that these actions were not sanctioned by the higher-ups. Why has our domestic(ated) media done such a nonexistent job of tracing all this stuff upward?

Dr. Steven Miles: When the Abu Ghraib prison investigation was announced in January 04, the US media and Congress was in an uproar over a wardrobe malfunction at a football game
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Fairfax, Va.: Is the culpability of medical personnel something new in America? If so, could it have similar origins as does the complicit behavior of those in the media who enable political leaders to do equally bad things by looking the other way or by actively participating in the perpetuation of misinformation?

Dr. Steven Miles: Although the US has a trouble history of collaborating with torturing regimes such as in El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, South Vietnam, and Batista's Cuba, our own military treatment of POWs has set the standard since WWII.

It is particularly distressing to me to see the good reputation of military medicine tarnished by civilian leaders at the Dept of Justice and Defense and by Commanders when this reputation was entrusted to them for temporary safe keeping and stewardship. General Colin Powell warned of this as the administration embarked on this policy.

The MSM is utterly missing in action on anything other than happy news from Iraq. I'm very concerned about the fact that CNN is positively slobbering over a possible war with Iran.