California Campaign to Stop Medical Torture

Success in Sacramento

The AFSC's coalition with Physicians for Social Responsibility and Program for Torture Victims recently succeeded in making an important first step in preventing California medical professionals from participating in torture.

Martha Dina Argello, Executive Director of Physicians for Responsibility - Los Angeles and Sandra Schwartz, AFSC San Francisco Peace Education Coordinator, bring the California Campaign to Stop Medical Torture to the halls and chambers of the California State Senate. Photo: Steven Gibson

Armed with 2,500 petition signatures, the testimony of respected professionals, and the endorsement of numerous supporting organizations, the California Campaign to Stop Medical Torture gained its first victory with the passage out of committee of Senate Joint Resolution 19—a bill to request all relevant California agencies to notify California-licensed health professionals about their obligations under international law relating to torture.

The bill, introduced by California State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas in the Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development of which he is the chair, won passage out of that body on January 14, 2008 by a vote of 5 to 0. It now goes to the Senate Floor.

Contact your legislators to tell them to support SJR 19!

Find your legislators >

Read the text of SJR 19 >

Track the legislation's progress >

Continue to Support This Campaign By Spreading the Word

1. Let your friends know about our online petition.

2. Download a hard copy of the petition form (PDF, 120 Kb), gather signatures, and send it back to us.

3. Download "What Would Dr. King Do?" (PDF, 243 Kb), a brochure about the California Campaign to Stop Medical Torture that you can hand out to potential petition-signers.

SJR 19 would also request that health professionals be notified that those who participate in torture may be subject to prosecution. Additionally, the resolution would request the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency to remove all California-licensed health professionals from participating in prisoner and detainee interrogations.

Thank You!

To those of you who signed our petition: Thank you!

Your support—as well as the support of faith communities, civil liberties groups, and professional organizations who sent letters to the committee—inspires us as we go forward to the floor of the state Senate.

This is a statewide campaign that has national implications. For although we have a long way to go before both houses of the state legislature pass this resolution, when it does pass, California will be the first state in the nation to remove its consent from torture.

Testimony on Senate Joint Resolution 19

Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee - California State Senate
January 14, 2008

The following people testified in support of SJR 19, a resolution to require California state licensing boards to notify health professionals of their obligation not to participate in acts of torture. Some of their testimony is posted for viewing here.

Jean Maria Arrigo, PhD

"Advocates of psychologists’ involvement in interrogations argue that psychologists serve to keep interrogations safe, legal, and ethical. My intelligence contacts scorn this claim."

A social psychologist, Dr. Arrigo has studied ethics of military intelligence and weapons development on human subjects for more than a decade as an independent scholar. She established the Ethics of Intelligence and Weapons Development Oral History Collection (2004) at Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley, and The Intelligence Ethics Collection (2005) at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University, to gather oral histories and personal papers from concerned intelligence professionals. She is the author of the articles "Utilitarian Argument against Torture Interrogation of Terrorists" (2004, Science and Engineering Ethics, 10, 543-572) and "Perils of Torture Interrogation" (2005, Armed Forces Journal). In 2005, Dr. Arrigo was appointed to the American Psychological Association's (APA) Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security, which ended up concluding that psychologists played a "valuable and ethical role" in assisting the military. In a speech at the 2007 APA Convention, she outlined conflicts of interest and other irregularities within that task force—six of whose nine voting members were from the military and intelligence agencies.

Read Dr. Arrigo's testimony (PDF, 94 Kb) >

Eisha Mason

"For AFSC and the 2500 people who have signed our coalition petition, torture is a moral and spiritual issue that strikes at the heart of our identity as a people and a nation."

Associate Regional Director of the AFSC's Pacific Southwest Region, Eisha Mason is a contributor to How to Stop the Next War Now, co-author of 64 Ways to Practice Nonviolence Curriculum and Resource Guide, and host of The Morning Review on KPFK.

Read Ms. Mason's testimony (PDF, 56 Kb) >

Steven Miles, MD

"There is ample evidence from United States' government’s own documents that some military medical personnel were complicit in the mistreatment of prisoners."

Board certified in Internal Medicine, Dr. Miles is Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis and a member of the faculty of the University’s Center for Bioethics. He has served as President of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and received its Distinguished Service Award. His latest book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror, Random House, 2006 examines military medicine in the war on terror prisons. Another book, The Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine, Oxford University Press, reviews the meaning of the Hippocratic Oath as illuminated by the medical texts of its time. He has taught in many countries and has served as medical director for the American Refugee Committee for twenty-five years which has included service as chief medical officer for 45,000 refugees on the Thai Cambodian border and projects in Sudan, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Indonesia and the Thai-Burmese border.

Read Dr. Miles' testimony (PDF, 78 Kb) >

Jose Quiroga, MD

"Currently, US health professionals who participate in water boarding face no sanctions."

Co-founder and medical director of Program for Torture Victimes, Dr. Quiroga is a globally-recognized authority on torture and trauma. He fled from Chile and arrived in America after the military coup that overthrew the democratically-elected president, Salvador Allende. He is a former assistant professor in the UCLA School of Public Health, and Associate Director of Preventive Cardiology at UCLA. Dr. Quiroga serves on the Executive Board of the Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, and is a Vice President on the Executive Committee of the International Rehabilitation Council for Victims of Torture based in Copenhagen.

Read Dr. Quiroga's testimony (PDF, 142 Kb) >

Martha Dina Arguello, Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles.

Michael Bernard Beckwith, founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center, co-founder of the Season for Nonviolence, and who is also featured in the 2006 breakthrough film, The Secret.

Barbara Olshansky, known for her groundbreaking work on the 2004 Rasul v. Bush case, in which the US Supreme Court found that American courts have jurisdiction over claims brought by Guantánamo detainees who are foreign nationals. She currently leads a human rights law clinic at Stanford Law School.

Jonathan Parfrey, former Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles.