Ethics abandoned

This report finds that health professionals designed and participated in cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of U.S. military detainees. The core principles of medicine require physicians to protect patients from "harm and injustice," to respect confidentiality, and to never take advantage of vulnerable patients. But the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense instructed physicians and other health professionals to disregard these principles while supervising detainees held by the United States in the so-called 'war on terror.' Ethics Abandoned, a report by a 20-person task force of physicians, lawyers, and human rights experts, has found that health professionals: Aided cruel and degrading interrogations; Helped devise and implement practices designed to maximize disorientation and anxiety so as to make detainees more malleable for interrogation; and Participated in the application of excruciatingly painful methods of force-feeding of mentally competent detainees carrying out hunger strikes.