Doctors, interrogation, and torture

Doctors' involvement in torture.

Doctors from both non-democratic and democratic countries are involved in torture. The majority of doctors involved in torture are doctors at risk. Doctors at risk might compromise their ethical duty towards patients for the following possible reasons: individual factors (such as career, economic or ideological reasons), threats, orders from a higher ranking officer, political initiatives, work...

Doctors and torture: the police surgeon.

Much has been written by many distinguished persons about the philosophical, religious and ethical considerations of doctors and their involvement with torture. What follows will not have the erudition or authority of the likes of St Augustine, Mahatma Gandi, Schopenhauer or Thomas Paine. It represents the views of a very ordinary person; a presumption defended by the submission that many very ...

Prevention of torture by doctors and organisations.

Doctors in prison: documenting torture in detention.

Introduction The documentation of torture inside a prison raises a certain number of issues specific to the fact that those people interviewed are still in custody. Quite obviously, there will be pitfalls to avoid, and safeguards to ensure, that will not be present when documenting torture within the relative safety and calm of a centre for torture survivors. In a prison, the prisoners who have...

Shane O’Mara’s Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and solitary confinement were some of the tactics outlined and authorized in a series of Bush Administration secret legal documents, known as the "torture memos," which were made public in 2009. Shane O'Mara's new book casts morality aside to examine whether torture produces reliable information. He reviews existing research in psychology and neuroscience to hi...