Health Profession Leaders Endorse Anti-Torture Bill

Four medical school deans, three present and former CEOs of leading academic medical centers, four professors of medicine, two Nobel Prize winners, the White House physician to former President George H. W. Bush, and the former director of health services at the New York City jails on Rikers Island have endorsed a bill to prohibit New York State-licensed health care professionals from aiding or participating in torture or the improper treatment of prisoners. (Statement attached.)

"This is extraordinary support," said Assembly Member Richard N. Gottfried, sponsor of the bill, A.6665-B, and chair of the Assembly Health Committee. The Assembly Committee on Higher Education favorably reported the bill on Tuesday.

The medical leaders said, "The bill offers support for physicians working in difficult environments to resist demands to participate in abuse. The bill is an important step in the process of restoring professional values and promoting accountability for violations."

"Whether you think waterboarding is 'enhanced interrogation' or torture, we should not be sending young people to medical school and giving them a license to practice healing so they can help a CIA agent or prison guard inflict pain and suffering," Gottfried said.

"U.S. Justice Department and CIA reports document that CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program relied heavily on physicians and other health care professionals to prevent a prisoner's collapse or death from interfering with the progress of the torture and to advise on how to conduct 'interrogation,'" said Gottfried. "The torture program depended on physician involvement."

"No physician or other health professional should be allowed to use his or her education, training, and professional status to cooperate in the torture or improper treatment of prisoners," he said. The states, which license health care professionals, should bar them from participating in torture or improper treatment of prisoners. I believe 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.'"

The bill has also been endorsed by: Amer. College of Physicians - NYS Chapter, Amer. Friends Service Committee, Amer. Medical Student Assoc., Amer. Psychoanalytic Assoc., Catholic Migration Office, Center for Constitutional Rights, Committee of Interns and Residents, Fortune Society, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, I Have A Dream Foundation - NY Metro Area, Metro NY Religious Campaign Against Torture, Natl. Assoc. of Social Workers - NYS Chapter, National Lawyers Guild - NYC Chapter, Natl. Physicians Alliance, NY Civil Liberties Union, NY Province of the Society of Jesus, NYS Defenders Justice Fund, NYS Society of Physician's Assistants, NYS Psychological Assoc., NYS Nurses Assoc., NYS Occupational Therapy Assoc., NYS Nurse Practitioner Assoc., NYU Post-Doctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, Physicians for Human Rights, Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, and William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology.



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 25, 2010
CONTACT: When Healers Harm
Kate Nicholson, (714) 244-5441/knicholson@post.harvard.edu
Allen Keller, M.D., (973) 951-7570 /allen.keller@nyumc.org
Emily Whitfield, (917) 686-4542/emily@emilywhitfield.org

Top Medical Professionals Support NYS Anti-Torture Bill, Nation's First

Luminaries in Medicine Issue Statement Supporting First Bill in the Nation to Provide Accountability for Torture and Abuse by Health Professionals

Signers Include Nobel Prize Winners, NY Medical School Deans and Hospital CEOs Action on the Bill Expected in the NYS Assembly Today

WASHINGTON - May 25 - In a statement issued today, 15 leaders in the medical and health fields -- including two Nobel Prize winners, former President George H.W. Bush's White House physician, and New York-based medical school deans and hospital CEOs -- called for passage of a bill introduced by New York State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried and State Senator Tom Duane that would provide for state disciplinary sanctions for health care professionals who participate in torture or improper treatment of prisoners.

"When a physician engages in conduct that deeply offends the values of society or the profession, they are investigated and disciplined," the statement said. "But no physician or other health professional who engaged in the interrogation of prisoners has been held accountable. Equally concerning is that no state licensing agency has initiated disciplinary action against health professionals who have so profoundly violated their professional ethics and public trust." (The full statement is pasted in below and online www.healersharm.org )

Assembly Bill A.6665-B and Senate Bill S-4495-A is the first legislation in the United States that would reinforce and strengthen existing ethical and legal responsibilities by explicitly prohibiting doctors and other health professionals licensed in the state from assisting in torture and prisoner abuse and would remove health professionals from all interrogations. Furthermore, the legislation provides health professionals with strong legal protection to resist and report any participation in acts of torture and abuse.

On Tuesday, the Education Committee of the New York State Assembly is expected to vote on the bill. Action is needed on the Senate side as well in order to secure passage by the end of this year's session, according to Dr. Allen Keller, a leading supporter of the legislation.

"New Yorkers have a right to know that their doctors don't participate in torture," said Dr. Keller, Associate Professor of Medicine at New York University School of Medicine and Director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. " I applaud these leaders for speaking out on a central moral issue of our time."

Leonard S. Rubenstein, a renowned medical ethics and human rights expert and another leading supporter of the bill, said its passage was needed to insure that the well-documented complicity and direct participation of physicians, psychologists and other health professionals in torture and abuse at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere will not be repeated.

"The ethical rules of the health professions have long prohibited participation in torture, but there has never been a mechanism for holding them accountable for violations. This legislation fills that critical gap," said Rubenstein, a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The bill follows ethical standards adopted by the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Paul Appelbaum, who chaired the American Psychiatric Association committee whose recommendations led to the standards, is one of the signatories on the letter.
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