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Stop Torture Project:
Medical Complicity in Torture

State-sponsored torture requires the complicity of government and professional institutions throughout society.  The involvement of medical and mental health professionals is critical to the operation of US-sponsored torture.

This participation in torture flies in the face of universal professional medical ethics, founded on the principle to "do no harm."  Medical and mental health professional associations at home and abroad forbid and condemn their members' active and passive involvement in torture. Some countries have even revoked the right to practice.

US military medical and mental health personnel as well as some private psychologists contracted by the CIA are active and passive participants in US-sponsored torture. US-licensed psychologists craft the protocol for and oversee psychological torture interrogations for military intelligence.

The US military medical system in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq and other US-operated foreign military prisons fails to protect detainees' rights to medical treatment, fails to prevent disclosure of confidential medical information to interrogators and others, fails to promptly report injuries or deaths caused by beatings, fails to report acts of psychological and sexual degradation, and has sometimes collaborated with abusive interrogators and guards.

Photo: Associated Press

We can do something to stop it. Read about the California Campaign to Stop Medical Torture.

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