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US army is breaking rules to make terrorists talk

Psychiatrists are being trained in how to interrogate terror suspects, despite internationally agreed codes of conduct barring doctors from such work

THE US military is training psychiatrists to interrogate terrorism suspects, in defiance of internationally agreed codes of conduct which bar doctors from involvement in interrogation.

“It undermines the notion of psychiatrists as healers, and undermines trust in the profession,” says Jonathan Marks, a professor of bioethics and law at Pennsylvania State University, University Park. From documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act he discovered that five US army psychiatrists had been trained between July 2006 and October 2007 (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 359, p 1090).

The American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association and the World Medical Association all have policies condemning the use of psychiatric advice in “softening up” detainees.

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Topics: Mental health