Human and health consequences of U.S. torture policy

Much has been written about the legal and policy contortions that led the Bush Administration to embark on the widespread use of torture. What less known are the human consequences of the Pentagon's decision to adopt its “enhanced” interrogation methods and how health professionals were sucked into the vortex of torture.

Physicians for Human Rights has published a study, Broken Laws, Broken Lives, based on in-depth medical and psychological examinations, using the international standards contained in the Istanbul Protocol, of 11 men detained by the United States as terror suspects. The report shows that the men experienced a horrific stew of pain, degradation, and enduring suffering. As always happens when a government starts down the torture road, intelligence gathering gave way to a regime of widespread cruelty that destroyed the men and demeans the nation.

In all the locations, most of the men were subjected to the methods authorized at various times: prolonged isolation, stress positions, temperature extremes, severe humiliation, sensory bombardment, use of dogs to instill fear and sleep deprivation. They were all threatened -- with death, with rape of their wives, and for Iraqis, with transfer to Guantanamo. All were beaten, three subjected to electric shock, and at least two were sodomized. They suffered grievously as a result; seven of the men considered suicide.

Health professionals were caught up in the regime, either abdicating their responsibility to provide care for the detainees or, in some cases, actively complicit in torture.