Study Assails Abu Ghraib Doctors

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The New York Sun

LONDON – Doctors working for the American military in Iraq collaborated with interrogators in the abuse of detainees at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, profoundly breaching medical ethics and human rights, a bioethicist charges in the medical journal Lancet.


In a scathing analysis of the behavior of military doctors, nurses, and medics, University of Minnesota professor Steven Miles calls for a reform of military medicine and an investigation into the role played by physicians and other medical staff in the torture scandal.


He cites evidence that doctors or medics falsified death certificates to cover up homicides, hid evidence of beatings, and revived a prisoner so he could be further tortured. “The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations,” Mr. Miles said in Lancet. “Army officials stated that a physician and a psychiatrist helped design, approve and monitor interrogations at Abu Ghraib.”


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