C.I.A.

Doctors, Ethics and Torture - The New York Times

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The Opinion Pages

LETTERS

C.I.A. Doctors, Ethics and Torture

NOV. 29, 2016

To the Editor:
Re When Doctors First Do Harm (Op-Ed, Nov. 23):
M. Gregg Bloche quotes memos from the Central Intelligence Agencys Office of Medical Services that
made clear what was expected of its doctors at clandestine interrogation sites: to flout medical ethics by
deceiving and brutalizing detainees and generally collaborating in abuse that included designing a
waterboarding method more extreme than the one condoned by lawyers in the George W. Bush
administration.
That is, engineering and participating in torture was expected behavior for C.I.A. doctors. There was thus
created what can be called a malignant normality in a subculture of torturers.
For me this is reminiscent of Nazi doctors, whose more vast and systematic participation in torture and
murder I studied some decades ago. The doctors in charge of the gas chambers in Auschwitz had not killed
anyone before their assignment to that death camp. They, too, had been socialized to a subculture of killing in
what was also a manifestation of the normalization of evil.
President-elect Donald Trump has advocated waterboarding and other forms of torture, but you report
(front page, Nov. 29) that if he seeks to resume it, he would meet with resistance from within the C.I.A., and
especially from its medical professionals.
In a democracy we are able to carry out what Dr. Bloche rightly asks for: an independent inquiry into
what those physicians did and how they lost their ethical moorings. Such an inquiry could go far toward
reasserting humane medical principles as well as acknowledging and rejecting the malignant normality that
can prevail when condoned from above and hidden from ordinary citizens.
ROBERT JAY LIFTON
New York
The writer, a psychiatrist, is the author of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of
Genocide.

11/29/2016 3:53 PM

C.I.A. Doctors, Ethics and Torture - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/opinion/cia-doctors-ethics-and-tortu...

To the Editor:
No physician or other medical professional should be allowed to use his or her education, training and
professional status to cooperate in the torture or improper treatment of prisoners.
The states that license medical professionals should bar them from participating in torture or improper
treatment of prisoners.
Widely accepted principles of medical ethics from the World Health Organization, the United Nations,
the American Medical Association and others ban such conduct. The law needs to enforce it.
Dr. M. Gregg Bloche is right that C.I.A. doctors may be Americas last defense against a return to
savagery. I believe that there would be much less abuse of prisoners if even a few physicians said, Sorry, sir;
I could lose my license if I do that. As President-elect Donald Trump talks about resuming the use of torture,
this is especially important.
RICHARD N. GOTTFRIED
New York
The writer, chairman of the New York Assembly health committee, is the sponsor of A. 4489, to
prohibit physicians and other medical professionals licensed in New York from participating in torture or
improper treatment of a prisoner.

2016 The New York Times Company

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