Physicians can’t ethically interrogate prisoners
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Psychiatrists and other physicians should not help the military or police to interrogate prisoners, according to a new report from the American Medical Association’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA).
Helping to plan or monitor prisoner interrogations with the “intention of intervening in the process” are actions outside the bounds of ethical behavior, CEJA said here Sunday.
Dr. Priscilla Ray of Houston, who serves as chair of CEJA said: “Physicians must neither conduct nor directly participate in an interrogation, because a role as physician-interrogator undermines the physician’s role as a healer and thereby erodes trust in the individual physician interrogator and in the medical profession.”
The CEJA report follows closely action taken last month by the American Psychiatric Association, which ruled that psychiatrists should not participate in interrogations. The new CEJA ruling came in a report, which can be adopted by the AMA House of Delegates or sent back to CEJA for fine-tuning. The AMA house, which begins voting on this and other actions today, cannot, however, amend the report.
In addition to ruling that participation in interrogations is unethical, the CEJA report warns physicians that if they “have reason to believe that interrogations are coercive, they must report their observations to appropriate authorities. If authorities are aware of coercive interrogations but have not intervened, physicians are ethically obligated to report the offenses to independent authorities that have the power to investigate or adjudicate such allegations.”
CEJA said that physicians may ethically “perform physical and mental assessments of detainees to determine the need for and to provide medical care,” but when they do so they must tell the prisoner that others will have access to that medical information.
CEJA also ruled that it is permissible to “participate in developing effective interrogation strategies for general training purposes,” but physicians can’t develop a specific strategy for use with a specific prisoner, Dr. Ray said.
The CEJA report comes in response to a request from Burlington, Vermont child psychiatrist Dr. David Fassler who last November asked the AMA for an ethical ruling on involvement of physicians in prisoner interrogations.
Fassler thanked CEJA for the report, which he called “thoughtful and responsive.”
The report was also praised by a number of military physicians who are members of the AMA House. Speaking for that group, Air Force Surgeon General Dr. George P. Taylor Jr. said, “This report provides valuable ethical guidance which is consistent with our commitment as military physicians to the practice of ethical medicine and to the defense of our great nation.”
But Physicians for Human Rights, led by Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist and retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army, said the report was too soft and used too much qualifying language. The result, he said, was an ambiguous statement. He warned that the military would find loopholes and use those loopholes to make a case for physician involvement in interrogations.
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