Do No Harm? Gitmo Medics Violated Ethics

While some detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay reported receiving medical care deemed "appropriate and satisfactory," there were reports that some health professionals assisted in the torture of prisoners and even withheld medical care unless detainees cooperated with their interrogators — actions the Red Cross calls "contrary to international standards of medical ethics."

(AP)

Medical professionals who monitored CIA interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility violated medical ethics, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a report disclosed Monday.

The 2007 report, based on interviews with 14 "high value detainees" who were sent to Guantanamo in September 2006, said the health personnel monitored detainees as they were subjected to techniques such as waterboarding - which simulates drowning - and prolonged stress positions.

In some cases, the Red Cross reported, medical staff recommended stopping the treatment; in others they "recommended its continuation, but with adjustments."

One detainee told the Red Cross "that a health person threatened that medical care would be conditional upon cooperation with the interrogators."

The report said the health personnel's "primary purpose appears to have been to serve the interrogation process, and not the patient."

"The interrogation process is contrary to international law," the Red Cross said, "and the participation in such a process is contrary to international standards of medical ethics."

The confidential 43-page report was published Monday on the Web site of The New York Review of Books.

Journalist Mark Danner, who obtained the report, revealed some of its findings last month in an article in the Review. [See CBS News: "Red Cross: Torture Committed At CIA Sites" (3/16/09)]

More information at cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/07/terror/main4925052.shtml