CIA doctors face human experimentation claims

Doctors working within the Central Intelligence Agency are being hit with claims that they experimented on humans, alleges one medical ethics group Physicians for Human Rights.

Doctors and psychologists from the CIA, that were employed to monitor the agency’s enhanced interrogation of terrorist suspects and detainees, are being accused of human experimentation, according to Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), reports the London Guardian. The not-for-profit group has investigated the roles of medical personnel in many detention facilities such as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram and a variety of other United States detention centers. Officials within PHR have concluded that doctors have been involved at every level of the CIA’s secret torture programs. PHR’s most extraordinary accusation is that medical officials involved, according to group’s latest report ‘Aiding Torture’, is that the doctors used subjects without their consent and ‘a practice that approaches unlawful experimentation.’ Human experimentation has been prohibited under international law under the Geneva Convention when the Nazis had done similar procedures against their own people. Physicians for Human Rights want a full investigation into the role of doctors and other medical personnel within the CIA. They want conclusions on how many were involved, what their specific duties and tasks were and what type of science was used. However, according to the CIA’s internal report, medical workers are given the task of ‘assessing and monitoring the health of all agency detainees’ after enhanced interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation, confinement in boxes, facial slaps and waterboarding. Guidelines of the report also state that doctors must ensure the detainees receive the proper amount of food and to monitor such things as their body temperatures after a technique like being placed in ‘uncomfortably cool environments, ranging from hours to days.’