Life at Gitmo, where doctors turn to torturers.
Jun/08/2006 00:50
Mr. President,
Recently, the army changed the role doctors played in interrogation of suspects in Guantanimo. Can you be an interrogator one minute and an interrogator the next?
We hear so much about the miraculous work our surgeons do in Iraq for the wounded it seems unfair to compare them with their counterparts at Guantanimo. But Guantanimo has also developed a reputation, a bad one. Doctors stationed there have received consistent criticism for allowing their patients to be tortured and for helping interrogators developing efficient means of torturing suspects captured in your war.
These are just a few ideals taken from the AMA. They are not laws; they are standards of conduct. They define the essentials of honorable behavior for doctors.
"Do no harm" is often touted as part of the "Hippocratic Oath" that doctors take but that is just a myth.
The "Hippocratic Oath" does partly state: "I will follow that method of treatment which according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patient and abstain from whatever is harmful or mischievous. "
Could doctors have been used unethically at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba when they force-feed detainees on hunger strikes and provide medical advice to help interrogators torture suspects? I might call that mischievous.
Physicians for Human Rights, said the military should prohibit psychologists or doctors from aiding in the questioning of detainees. "They are using their professional knowledge to hurt people," he said. "The bottom line is health professionals should not be involved in interrogations.
The new rules issued this week offer new guidance on force-feeding. They say that medical personnel may assist in force-feeding detainees on a hunger strike "without the consent of the detainee to prevent death or serious harm." The directive says the treatment must be medically necessary.
Although doctors have always been held in high esteem for their power to heal and profound sense of caring of the ill, I don't think these force-fed suspects will be asking their doctors out for a round of golf.
What the hell is happening in Gitmo? The darker side of medical practice often goes unnoticed. As my father-in-law once told me doctors bury their mistakes. Sometime doctors cross way over the line and partake in horrific crimes against humanity, like the infamous Dr. Mengele.
Dr. Mengele also known as the "angel of death" is perhaps the most notorious example of evil in a white coat with a stethoscope.
According to several biographies, Mengele wanted to understand the secrets of genetic engineering, and to devise methods for eliminating inferior genes from the human population to creating a Germanic super-race.
Mengele was assigned to Auschwitz in Germany during World War II. When Doctor Mengele was assigned to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, he routinely determined the best means of dealing with sick Jewish prisoners was to have thousands of them immediately gassed.
One of his favorite activities was separating new arrivals to Auschwitz concentration camp, into two groups. He chose from 10 to 30 per cent to work. The remaining 70 per cent were sent directly to the gas chambers and crematorium.
He personally selected prisoners for his experiments from the ten to 30 per cent who temporarily cheated death. His hideous experiments included the dissection of live infants; the castration of boys and men without using anesthetics, testing how long men and women could survive after repeated high-voltage electric shocks, x-ray radiation, injection of a variety of chemicals, such as phenol, petrol, Evipal, chloroform, or air into the into their hearts or into their blood streams.
Dr Mengele was obsessed with twins; they were called "Mengele's Children." He had them measured and documented to the highest degree possible. He kept them separated from the other prisoners along with other "exotic specimens such as dwarfs and cripples.
From then on they were subjected to horrible medical procedures some of which included experiments to change eye color by injecting dyes into the vitreous humor in the eye. The prisoners always suffered extreme pain, infections and often blindness. Other twins were injected with bacteria to see how long it would take for them to die from various diseases. The cadavers of all the twins who finally died were meticulously dissected and documented.
Sometimes experiments were designed to create better clothing for German soldiers. The body temperature of prisoners was monitored as they were frozen in vats of ice water. Mengele would also put prisoners into pressure chambers to simulate high altitude flying and test the endurance of prisoners. The chamber was repeatedly pressurize and depressurized until the prisoners either suffocated or their lungs ruptured.
I doubt that you would find anyone who wouldn't call those German Nazi doctors like Mengele demented sadistic monsters. Boy, I am glad I live in a country where our doctors would never subject us to painful deadly experiments like that.
Sorry to disappoint you because not everyone was exactly free from inhuman treatment by American doctors. Just ask the survivors of the Tuskegee experiment.
The "experiment" ran for forty years between 1932 and 1972, by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS). They conducted this "experiment" on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These black men, were mostly trusting illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama.
PHS doctors told these men they were being treated for “bad blood,” at no cost. But in reality these doctors had no intention of curing them of anything, especially syphilis. PHS doctors were mostly interested in collecting data from their autopsies after they died.
These poor black farmers were left to degenerate while doctors watched them suffer with tertiary syphilis, which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death.
At first, the men were given bismuth, neoarsphenamine, and mercury, but only in such small amounts. They were eventually given “pink medicine” which we know as aspirin, to keep them coming in and be given a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap. The PHS doctors promoted messages such as “Last Chance for Special Free Treatment.”
To escalate the gravity of this atrocity, the men from the Tuskegee experiment were not allowed to receive penicillin even after it was discovered in the 1940s to be the first real cure for syphilis.
The experiment was ended in 1972, after a whistle blower finally leaked the study to the Washington Star on July 25, 1972, in an article by Jean Heller of the Associated Press. By then, 28 of the men had died of syphilis, 100 died from related complications, 40 of the men's wives were infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis.
News anchor Harry Reasoner described it as an experiment that “used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone.
The outcry from the country about this shameful episode in our history failed to convince many participating doctors and nurses. They felt that there was nothing unethical about what they were doing.
As we change the calendar to the present day at Guantanimo; military doctors, nurses and medics stationed at Gitmo cared for approximately 600 suspects and gave health information to military and CIA interrogators, to help develop applicable means of torture, according to the report in the respected New England Journal of Medicine.
Military care givers were directly involved in assessing the best means of applying torture and rewards to break the suspects.
"An internal, May 24, 2005, memo from the Army Medical Command, offered this comment, "The cruel and degrading measures taken by some, in violation of international human rights law and the laws of war, have become a matter of national shame. The global political fallout from such abuses may pose more of a threat to U.S. security than any secrets still closely held by shackled internees at Guantanamo Bay,"
What kind of signal did Alberto Gonzalez send when he offered his description of the Geneva convention as quaint?" The men at Abu Gharib knew what to do. What have Gitmo medical personnel done in their fevered pursuit to determine if a suspect knows anything of value?
If we draw a line, with Dr. Mengele at one end and the code of ethics offered by the AMA on the other, how far down that line to hell's travesties, have military doctors slid with your blessing?
It is no wonder why you refused to participate in the International Court. We could very well have many military personnel charged with atrocities just like many Nazis were.
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: June 8, 2006 1:27:56 AM CDT
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write.
Recently, the army changed the role doctors played in interrogation of suspects in Guantanimo. Can you be an interrogator one minute and an interrogator the next?
We hear so much about the miraculous work our surgeons do in Iraq for the wounded it seems unfair to compare them with their counterparts at Guantanimo. But Guantanimo has also developed a reputation, a bad one. Doctors stationed there have received consistent criticism for allowing their patients to be tortured and for helping interrogators developing efficient means of torturing suspects captured in your war.
- Every prisoner in Guantanimo had a doctor treat them at some point. Or in other words, they are under a doctor's care. How do they reconcile their behavior against the principles they once held high?
- The American Medical Association (AMA) has some principles quite high on their list.
- A physician shall respect the law and recognize a responsibility to seek changes in those requirements which are contrary to the best interests of the patient.
These are just a few ideals taken from the AMA. They are not laws; they are standards of conduct. They define the essentials of honorable behavior for doctors.
"Do no harm" is often touted as part of the "Hippocratic Oath" that doctors take but that is just a myth.
The "Hippocratic Oath" does partly state: "I will follow that method of treatment which according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patient and abstain from whatever is harmful or mischievous. "
Could doctors have been used unethically at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba when they force-feed detainees on hunger strikes and provide medical advice to help interrogators torture suspects? I might call that mischievous.
Physicians for Human Rights, said the military should prohibit psychologists or doctors from aiding in the questioning of detainees. "They are using their professional knowledge to hurt people," he said. "The bottom line is health professionals should not be involved in interrogations.
The new rules issued this week offer new guidance on force-feeding. They say that medical personnel may assist in force-feeding detainees on a hunger strike "without the consent of the detainee to prevent death or serious harm." The directive says the treatment must be medically necessary.
Although doctors have always been held in high esteem for their power to heal and profound sense of caring of the ill, I don't think these force-fed suspects will be asking their doctors out for a round of golf.
What the hell is happening in Gitmo? The darker side of medical practice often goes unnoticed. As my father-in-law once told me doctors bury their mistakes. Sometime doctors cross way over the line and partake in horrific crimes against humanity, like the infamous Dr. Mengele.
Dr. Mengele also known as the "angel of death" is perhaps the most notorious example of evil in a white coat with a stethoscope.
According to several biographies, Mengele wanted to understand the secrets of genetic engineering, and to devise methods for eliminating inferior genes from the human population to creating a Germanic super-race.
Mengele was assigned to Auschwitz in Germany during World War II. When Doctor Mengele was assigned to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, he routinely determined the best means of dealing with sick Jewish prisoners was to have thousands of them immediately gassed.
One of his favorite activities was separating new arrivals to Auschwitz concentration camp, into two groups. He chose from 10 to 30 per cent to work. The remaining 70 per cent were sent directly to the gas chambers and crematorium.
He personally selected prisoners for his experiments from the ten to 30 per cent who temporarily cheated death. His hideous experiments included the dissection of live infants; the castration of boys and men without using anesthetics, testing how long men and women could survive after repeated high-voltage electric shocks, x-ray radiation, injection of a variety of chemicals, such as phenol, petrol, Evipal, chloroform, or air into the into their hearts or into their blood streams.
Dr Mengele was obsessed with twins; they were called "Mengele's Children." He had them measured and documented to the highest degree possible. He kept them separated from the other prisoners along with other "exotic specimens such as dwarfs and cripples.
From then on they were subjected to horrible medical procedures some of which included experiments to change eye color by injecting dyes into the vitreous humor in the eye. The prisoners always suffered extreme pain, infections and often blindness. Other twins were injected with bacteria to see how long it would take for them to die from various diseases. The cadavers of all the twins who finally died were meticulously dissected and documented.
Sometimes experiments were designed to create better clothing for German soldiers. The body temperature of prisoners was monitored as they were frozen in vats of ice water. Mengele would also put prisoners into pressure chambers to simulate high altitude flying and test the endurance of prisoners. The chamber was repeatedly pressurize and depressurized until the prisoners either suffocated or their lungs ruptured.
I doubt that you would find anyone who wouldn't call those German Nazi doctors like Mengele demented sadistic monsters. Boy, I am glad I live in a country where our doctors would never subject us to painful deadly experiments like that.
Sorry to disappoint you because not everyone was exactly free from inhuman treatment by American doctors. Just ask the survivors of the Tuskegee experiment.
The "experiment" ran for forty years between 1932 and 1972, by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS). They conducted this "experiment" on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These black men, were mostly trusting illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama.
PHS doctors told these men they were being treated for “bad blood,” at no cost. But in reality these doctors had no intention of curing them of anything, especially syphilis. PHS doctors were mostly interested in collecting data from their autopsies after they died.
These poor black farmers were left to degenerate while doctors watched them suffer with tertiary syphilis, which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death.
At first, the men were given bismuth, neoarsphenamine, and mercury, but only in such small amounts. They were eventually given “pink medicine” which we know as aspirin, to keep them coming in and be given a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap. The PHS doctors promoted messages such as “Last Chance for Special Free Treatment.”
To escalate the gravity of this atrocity, the men from the Tuskegee experiment were not allowed to receive penicillin even after it was discovered in the 1940s to be the first real cure for syphilis.
The experiment was ended in 1972, after a whistle blower finally leaked the study to the Washington Star on July 25, 1972, in an article by Jean Heller of the Associated Press. By then, 28 of the men had died of syphilis, 100 died from related complications, 40 of the men's wives were infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis.
News anchor Harry Reasoner described it as an experiment that “used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone.
The outcry from the country about this shameful episode in our history failed to convince many participating doctors and nurses. They felt that there was nothing unethical about what they were doing.
As we change the calendar to the present day at Guantanimo; military doctors, nurses and medics stationed at Gitmo cared for approximately 600 suspects and gave health information to military and CIA interrogators, to help develop applicable means of torture, according to the report in the respected New England Journal of Medicine.
Military care givers were directly involved in assessing the best means of applying torture and rewards to break the suspects.
"An internal, May 24, 2005, memo from the Army Medical Command, offered this comment, "The cruel and degrading measures taken by some, in violation of international human rights law and the laws of war, have become a matter of national shame. The global political fallout from such abuses may pose more of a threat to U.S. security than any secrets still closely held by shackled internees at Guantanamo Bay,"
What kind of signal did Alberto Gonzalez send when he offered his description of the Geneva convention as quaint?" The men at Abu Gharib knew what to do. What have Gitmo medical personnel done in their fevered pursuit to determine if a suspect knows anything of value?
If we draw a line, with Dr. Mengele at one end and the code of ethics offered by the AMA on the other, how far down that line to hell's travesties, have military doctors slid with your blessing?
It is no wonder why you refused to participate in the International Court. We could very well have many military personnel charged with atrocities just like many Nazis were.
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: June 8, 2006 1:27:56 AM CDT
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write.