*Ø* Doctors were part of Abu Ghraib Abuse

By Emma Ross, AP Medical Writer

"LONDON - Doctors working for the U.S. military in Iraq collaborated with interrogators in the abuse of detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, profoundly breaching medical ethics and human rights, a bioethicist charges in The Lancet medical journal.

"In a scathing analysis of the behavior of military doctors, nurses and medics, University of Minnesota professor Steven Miles calls for a reform of military medicine and an official investigation into the role played by physicians and other medical staff in the torture scandal.

"He cites evidence that doctors or medics falsified death certificates to cover up homicides, hid evidence of beatings and revived a prisoner so he could be further tortured. No reports of abuses were initiated by medical personnel until the official investigation into Abu Ghraib began, he found.

"'The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations,' Miles said in this week's edition of Lancet. 'Army officials stated that a physician and a psychiatrist helped design, approve and monitor interrogations at Abu Ghraib' ...

"'The detaining power's health personnel are the first and often the last line of defense against human rights abuses. Their failure to assume that role emphasizes to the prisoner how utterly beyond humane appeal they are,' Miles said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. [my emphasis - N]

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