Psychiatr News October 20, 2006
Volume 41, Number 20, page 25
© 2006 American Psychiatric Association
Prisoner Interrogations
Robert Paul Liberman, M.D.
Los Angeles, Calif.
In the July 7 issue it was reported that APA had endorsed a policy that
psychiatrists should not participate directly in interrogations of
prisoners. This policy statement was spirited by the abuse of medical ethics
by certain physicians who had had a hand in the interrogation of Afghan and
Iraqi prisoners in the Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons.
Since psychiatrists are much more likely to be invited or ordered (if in
the military) to consult indirectly with interrogators, it is a stain
on our profession to imply that any participation in interrogation other than
direct participation is within our profession's ethical standards. Giving
advice to military or correctional interrogators on how to influence or
motivate the disclosure of intelligence or confessions is tantamount to
participation in torture. As physicians, we cannot excuse consultations by
statements such as "I didn't know what was going on" or "I
was just following orders."
Individual values and responsibility of physicians are shaped by their
medical organizations as well as by residency programs that implicitly
influence trainees to view patients as little more than the abstract sums of
their diagnoses, thereby minimizing their uniqueness as human beings, as noted
by S.H. Miles in the book Oath Betrayed (Random House, 2006).
I expect more of APA and urge its governing officials to pronounce any
and all participation in interrogations as unethical.
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