GLOBE EDITORIALS
Silence of the doctorsTHE DAMAGE to the reputation of the United States done by the abuses and, in some cases, the killings of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq will take years to repair. Now allegations have surfaced that in addition to the soldiers who disgraced the uniform by their actions, health care personnel might have violated their own professional codes.
An article in the British medical journal The Lancet last week provided evidence that doctors, physician assistants, nurses, and medics at Abu Ghraib assisted in or remained silent in the face of prisoner abuse. A crucial step in the process of establishing accountability for Abu Ghraib will be the reports that both military and civilian review panels put together. This week Major General George Fay is expected to release a report that will blame high-level failures of leadership but call for no charges against any of the officers involved. According to the Lancet article's author, Dr. Steven Miles, a previous Army report on the prison, testimony before Congress, and news reports reveal that medical personnel at the prison did not give detainees appropriate care, assisted interrogators in abusive techniques, falsified detainees' death certificates to report violent homicides as natural deaths, and never reported any of the inhumane treatment of detainees to their superiors before the Army began its own investigation last January. First reports of the abuse came from the International Committee of the Red Cross, later ones from nonmedical enlisted soldiers. Lieutenant Colonel Joe Richard, a spokesman for the Pentagon, criticized the Lancet article as "a broad-brushed indictment" based on "allegations." Although Richard said there was no "evidence" to support Miles' assertions, he acknowledged that many come from an earlier Army report on Abu Ghraib by Major General Antonio Taguba. Richard said that as far as he knows, no medical personnel are the direct targets of any inquiries. If that is true, it is all the more important that the Lancet article has raised the question of physicians' conduct at the Iraqi prison, in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The prohibition against doctors participating in torture or abusive interrogation is spelled out by the World Medical Association: "Doctors shall not countenance, condone or participate in torture or other forms of degrading procedures . . . in all situations, including armed conflict and civil strife."
On Aug. 6, before the Lancet article appeared, Physicians for Human Rights called on James Schlesinger, chairman of an independent panel reviewing military detention operations, to question the role of medical personnel at the Pentagon's overseas prisons. There should be no whitewashing of misconduct either by physicians or by those at the top of the chain of command. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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