Medical Involvement In Torture - From Biko To Guantanamo

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Main Category: Litigation / Medical Malpractice
Also Included In: Aid / Disasters;  Public Health
Article Date: 07 Sep 2007 - 0:00 PST

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It was thirty years ago that Steve Biko died while in police custody in South Africa. An article in The Lancet this week draws a parallel between the role of US military doctors in Guantanamo Bay and the Biko case.

The South African Minister of Justice at the time indicated that Biko died as a result of a hunger strike. A subsequent inquest disclosed that head injuries sustained during the police questioning, along with grossly inadequate medical attention from two physicians (Benjamin Tucker and Ivor Lang) were the causes of death.

In this article (Correspondence) six doctors discuss the accusations of force-feeding prisoners who are on hunger strike in Guantanamo, as well as additional ethical abuses in the War on Terror. The Correspondence is signed by 260 doctors from around the globe. The fact that American authorities have taken no action would be interpreted as a criminal act in England, according to the Royal College of Physicians, UK, say the writers.

"No health-care worker has been charged or convicted of any significant offence despite numerous instances documented including fraudulent record keeping on detainees who have died as a result of failed interrogations. We suspect that the doctors in Guantanamo and elsewhere have made the same mistake as Tucker, who, in 1991, in expressing remorse and seeking reinstatement, said 'I had gradually lost the fearless independence...and become too closely identified with the organs of the State, especially the police force...I have come to realize that a medical practitioner's first responsibility is the wellbeing of his patient, and that a medical practitioner cannot subordinate his patient's interest to extraneous considerations," the authors write.

The authors conclude that the stance of the American medical establishment seems to be one of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".

Biko to Guantanamo: 30 years of medical involvement in torture
David J Nicholl, Trefor Jenkins, Steven H Miles, William Hopkins, Adnan Siddiqui, Frank Boulton, on behalf of 260 other signatories
The Lancet - Vol. 370, Issue 9590, 8 September 2007, Page 823
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Written by: Christian Nordqvist
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