Medical torture

Medical torture describes the involvement of, or sometimes instigation by, medical personnel in acts of torture, either to judge what victims can endure, to apply treatments which will enhance torture, or as torturers in their own right. Medical torture overlaps with medical interrogation if it involves the use of professional medical expertise to facilitate interrogation or corporal punishment, in the conduct of torturous human experimentation or in providing professional medical sanction and approval for the torture of prisoners. Medical torture also covers torturous scientific (or pseudoscientific) experimentation upon unwilling human subjects.

Medical ethics and international law

Medical torture fundamentally violates medical ethics, which all medical practitioners are expected to adhere to.
* The Hippocratic Oath makes explicit statements against deliberate harm not in the patient's best interests. These statements are often translated as ''"I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment"'' and ''"to never deliberately do harm to anyone, for anyone else's interest."'' (Note: these statements are formulations of the ethical principles of beneficence and non-maleficence.)
* In response to the Nazi human experimentation on prisoners during World War II, which were declared at the post-World War II Nuremberg Trials to be "crimes against humanity", the World Medical Association developed the Declaration of Geneva to supplant the dated Hippocratic Oath. The Declaration of Geneva requires medical practitioners to state " , the medical practitioner/nowiki> will maintain the utmost respect for human life from its beginning even under threat and I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity."
* The Nuremberg Trials also led to the emergence of the Nuremberg Code which explicitly outlines the boundaries of acceptable medical experimentation.
* Additionally in response to the Nazi atrocities, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 outright prohibits the torture of prisoners of war and other protected non-combatants.
* The World Medical Association Declaration of Tokyo (1975) makes a number of specific statements against torture, including "The doctor shall not ''countenance'', ''condone'' or ''participate in'' the practice of torture".
* Also the UN Convention Against Torture, which applies to medical personnel in addition to law enforcement officers, military personnel, politicians, and other persons acting in an official capacity, prohibits the use of torture under any circumstance. Under Article 2(2) of the Convention, it states that "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
* The UN Principles of Medical Ethics relevant to the Role of Health Personnel, particularly Physicians, in the Protection of Prisoners and Detainees against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UN.1982) applies specifically to medical and other health workers but it has no implementation mechanism to ensure enforcement. It is up to state, provincial, and national bodies to enforce the standards in the document.
* The development of command responsibility established criminal liability for all people, including physicians, involved in crimes against humanity.

There remain gaps in regulation relating to medical torture in many countries. A higher standard of behaviour is expected of health professionals yet the UN Principles of Medical Ethics are not enforceable when governments are complicit in violations. This higher standard is reflected in the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence (above all do no harm), autonomy, justice, dignity and informed consent and these are not covered comprehensively by the UN Convention Against Torture.

Examples

* Between 1937 and 1945, Japanese medical personnel who were part of Unit 731 participated in the torture and murder of as many as 10,000 Korean, Chinese, Russian, American and other prisoners as well as Allied POWs during the second Sino-Japanese War.
* During World War II, inmates in Nazi concentration camps were subjected to medical experiments. Josef Mengele was the most notorious perpetrator, earning him the nickname "Angel of Death". Some doctors also ensured that inmates were painfully executed. For example, Hermann Fischer-Hüllstrung, who played a role in executing notable inmates such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "had the job of reviving political prisoners after they had been hanged until they were almost dead, in order to prolong the agony of their dying."
* Between 1970 and 1971, mentally disorienting interrogation techniques were used against interned prisoners captured in Northern Ireland, including white noise. The Irish government complained to the European Commission for Human Rights, who found Britain guilty of torture; however the higher European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British government's actions were "inhuman and degrading but did not constitute torture".
* In Soviet mental hospitals used to hold political prisoners, very unpleasant medications were given to these "patients" as a means of punishment. A psychiatric diagnosis was devised to describe people who oppose government policies.
* In 1978, "Pisaot menuh" ("Human Experiments") were performed on seventeen political prisoners held at the infamous prison Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh under the Khmer Rouge.
* A study called " The Aversion Project" found that gay conscripts in the South African Defence Forces (SADF) during the apartheid era had been forced to submit to "curing" their homosexuality, both by electroshock therapies and by botched sex changes.
* There have been numerous claims that electroconvulsive therapy and prefrontal lobotomies and similar psychiatric treatments have sometimes been performed not in the patient's best interests, but rather as punishment for misbehaviour or to otherwise make the patient easier to manage. A classic example of this is the Lake Alice, New Zealand atrocity which occurred in the early 1970s. Children admitted to the Lake Alice Hospital's open child and adolescent unit were routinely punished with unmodified ECT (that is, ECT without anesthesia). Some governments (e.g. Norway and New Zealand) have since begun paying reparations to patients who suffered such treatments. The World Health Organization has called for a ban on unmodified ECT, and states no form of it should be used on children.
* In 2016, a group consisting of 71 British medical doctors urged that Israel's membership in the World Medical Association should be revoked, alleging that Israeli doctors performed state-endorsed "medical torture" on Palestinians. However, no official motion for expulsion was ever filed, nor were these allegations upheld by the World Medical Association.

Purported medical or professional complicity

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights

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