Doctors And Nurses Complicit In CIA Torture, Alleges Report By Institute Of Medicine And Open Society Foundations

DOCTOR and nurses tasked with monitoring the health of terror suspects were complicit in abuses committed at prisons run by the Pentagon and the CIA, an independent report has alleged.

The US Defence Department and the CIA demanded that the health care personnel "collaborate in intelligence gathering and security practices in a way that inflicted severe harm on detainees in US custody," according to the two-year study by the Institute of Medicine and the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations.

Medical professionals helped design, enable and participated in "torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment" of detainees, according to the report. Collaboration at US prisons in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and the Central Intelligence Agency secret detention sites began after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States.

"It's clear that in the name of national security, the military trumped (the Hippocratic Oath), and physicians were transformed into agents of the military and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics and practice," said study co-author Gerald Thomson, professor of medicine emeritus at Columbia University. The Hippocratic Oath is a committment made by medical personnel to practice their profession in an honest and ethical manner....