The Institute on Medicine as a Profession and the Open Society Institute have convened a Task Force on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers. The Task Force is analyzing the dynamics of health professionals’ involvement in interrogation, force feeding, and other areas of potential detainee abuse. Its mission is to identify initiatives both internal, in the military and Department of Defense, and external, in the civilian community, that will encourage adherence to medical professional standards.
The Task Force will make policy recommendations that seek to promote internal structural reform within the military, enhance pre-deployment education of health professionals, expand undergraduate and graduate medical education on dual loyalty and national and international codes of conduct, create awareness of these issues among Professional Medical Associations, and encourage the enactment of state laws to create accountability mechanisms.
In the second year of the project (2011-2012), the Task Force will seek to implement these policy recommendations.
Members of Coordinating Committee:
Aryeh Neier
Open Society Institute
David J. Rothman
Institute on Medicine as a Profession
Leonard Rubenstein, JD
Johns Hopkins University
Gerald Thomson , MD
Columbia University
Members of Task Force:
Scott Allen, MD
Brown University
George Annas, JD
Boston University
Karen Brudney, MD
Columbia University
Sondra Crosby, MD
Boston University
Hon. Richard Gottfried, JD
New York State Assembly
Vincent Iacopino , MD, PhD
Physicians for Human Rights
University of Minnesota
Robert Lawrence , MD
Johns Hopkins University
Jonathan Marks, JD
Harvard University
Steven Miles, MD
University of Minnesota
Deborah Popowski, JD
Harvard Law School
Steven Reisner, PhD
New York University
Hernan Reyes, MD
International Committee of the Red Cross
Steven Sharfstein , MD
Sheppard Pratt Health Systems
Albert Shimkus, Jr.
Capt., US Navy ret; Naval War College
Eric Stover
Human Rights Center (UC Berkeley)
Frederick Turton , MD
American College of Physicians
Stephen Xenakis, MD
Brig. Gen, US Army, ret.
Excerpt from the Introduction of the Task Force Report:
“Everyone concerned with the integrity of medical professionalism and respect for human rights considers the participation of physicians in the interrogation and torture of military prisoners to be an egregious and alarming violation of the precepts of medical ethics and international conventions. Medical oaths and international declarations unambiguously prohibit and condemn such behavior. Nevertheless, in the aftermath of 9/11, these violations occurred at the detention camps in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. How did physicians and other health professionals come to participate in these activities? Why were accepted principles and codes ignored? What we can we learn from these events to prevent future occurrences? These are the central questions this report addresses—and although their significance is self-evident, they are by no means simple to answer.”