Medical torture - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Medical torture describes the involvement and sometimes active participation of medical professionals in acts of torture

Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

, either to judge what victims can endure, to apply treatments which will enhance torture, or as torturers in their own right. Medical torture may involve the use of their expert medical knowledge to facilitate interrogation

Interrogation

Interrogation is interviewing as commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and Intelligence agencies with the goal of extracting a confession or obtaining information. Subjects of interrogation are often the suspects, victims, or witnesses of a crime...

or corporal punishment

Corporal punishment

Corporal punishment is a form of physical punishment that involves the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for an offence, or for the purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behaviour deemed unacceptable...

, in the conduct of torturous human experimentation

Human experimentation

Human subject research includes experiments and observational studies. Human subjects are commonly participants in research on basic biology, clinical medicine, nursing, psychology, and all other social sciences. Humans have been participants in research since the earliest studies...

or in providing professional medical sanction and approval for the torture of prisoners. The term also covers torturous scientific (or pseudo-scientific) experimentation upon unwilling human subjects.

Medical ethics and international law

It is generally accepted that medical torture fundamentally violates medical ethics

Medical ethics

Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology.-History:Historically,...

, which all medical practitioners are expected to adhere to.

The Hippocratic Oath
Hippocratic Oath
The Hippocratic Oath is an oath historically taken by physicians and other healthcare professionals swearing to practice medicine ethically. It is widely believed to have been written by Hippocrates, often regarded as the father of western medicine, or by one of his students. The oath is written in...

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 judgement" 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
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the Nazi German regime in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there...

on prisoners, which were declared at the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....

to be "crimes against humanity", the World Medical Association
World Medical Association
The World Medical Association is an international and independent confederation of free professional Medical Associations, therefore representing physicians worldwide...

developed the Declaration of Geneva
Declaration of Geneva
The Declaration of Geneva was adopted by the General Assembly of the World Medical Association at Geneva in 1948 and amended in 1968, 1984, 1994, 2005 and 2006. It is a declaration of physicians' dedication to the humanitarian goals of medicine, a declaration that was especially important in view...

to supplant the dated Hippocratic Oath. The Declaration of Geneva requires medical practitioners to state "[I, the medical practitioner] 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
Nuremberg Code
The Nuremberg Code is a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation set as a result of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials at the end of the Second World War.-Background:...

which explicitly outlines the boundaries of acceptable medical experimentation.
Additionally in response to the Nazi atrocities, the Fourth Geneva Convention
Fourth Geneva Convention
The Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, commonly referred to as the Fourth Geneva Convention and abbreviated as GCIV, is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions. It was adopted in August 1949, and defines humanitarian protections for civilians...

of 1949 outright prohibits the torture of prisoners of war and other protected non-combatants.
The World Medical Association
World Medical Association
The World Medical Association is an international and independent confederation of free professional Medical Associations, therefore representing physicians worldwide...

Declaration of Tokyo (1975) http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/tokyo.html 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 not only to medical staff, prohibits the use of torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

under any circumstance. The text explicitly states there is no exception to this treaty under which torture is allowed.
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
Command responsibility
Command responsibility, sometimes referred to as the Yamashita standard or the Medina standard, and also known as superior responsibility, is the doctrine of hierarchical accountability in cases of war crimes....

established criminal liability
Legal liability
Legal liability is the legal bound obligation to pay debts.* In law a person is said to be legally liable when they are financially and legally responsible for something. Legal liability concerns both civil law and criminal law. See Strict liability. Under English law, with the passing of the Theft...

for all people, including physicians, involved in crimes against humanity.

There remain gaps in regulation relating to medical torture in many countries:

Government sponsored torture and organized violence, with the complicity and or participation of health personnel, is internationally prohibited yet these violations occur with impunity in a significant amount of cases. An example of this impunity is found in the Abu Ghraib prison
Abu Ghraib
The city of Abu Ghraib in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq is located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000. The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib...

torture and prisoner scandal as well as documented by Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

.
A higher standard of behaviour is expected of health professionals yet the UN Principles of Medical Ethics
UN Principles of Medical Ethics
The UN Principles of Medical Ethics is a code of medical ethics relating to the "roles of health personnel in the protection of persons against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.", adopted by the United Nations on 18 December 1982 at the 111th plenary meeting of...

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 aren’t covered comprehensively by the UN Convention Against Torture.

Asserted instances

Between 1937 and 1945, Japanese medical personnel who were part of Unit 731
Unit 731
was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese...

participated in the torture killings of as many as 10,000 Chinese, Russian, American and other prisoners as well as Allied POWs during the second Sino-Japanese War.http://www.aiipowmia.com/731/731caveat.html
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, Unit 731
Unit 731
was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese...

of the Japanese Imperial Army tried out various biological weapons on Chinese subjects.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

regime in Germany conducted human medical experimentation
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the Nazi German regime in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there...

on large numbers of people held in its concentration camps. In particular, Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele
Josef Rudolf Mengele , also known as the Angel of Death was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University...

's experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz earned him the nicknames "the Angel of Death" and "Dr. Death".
Japanese surgeons also performed vivisection
Vivisection
Vivisection is defined as surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure...

and other medical experiments to torture American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

prisoners of war in several islands of the Pacific. http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/medical-experiments.html http://www.nopukob.com/id27.htm
Between 1970 and 1971, mentally disorienting interrogation techniques were used against interned prisoners captured in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

, including white noise
White noise
White noise is a random signal with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal contains equal power within a fixed bandwidth at any center frequency...

. 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
European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...

ruled that the British government's actions were "inhuman and degrading but did not constitute torture". http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/troubles/origins/internment.shtml
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 prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....

s held at the infamous prison Tuol Sleng
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The site is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 by the Khmer Rouge communist regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979...

in Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia. Located on the banks of the Mekong River, Phnom Penh has been the national capital since the French colonized Cambodia, and has grown to become the nation's center of economic and industrial activities, as well as the center of security,...

under the Khmer Rouge
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...

.
A study called "The Aversion Project" found that gay conscripts in the South African Defense Forces (SADF) during the apartheid era had been forced to submit to "curing" their homosexuality, both by electroshock therapies and by botched sex change
Sex change
Sex change is a term often used for gender reassignment therapy, that is, all medical procedures transgendered people can have, or specifically to sexual reassignment surgery, which usually refers to genitalia surgery only...

s.
There have been numerous claims that electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy , formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown...

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
Lake Alice Hospital
Lake Alice Hospital was a rural psychiatric facility near Bulls in Rangitikei, New Zealand. It was opened in August 1950, and had a Maximum Security unit....

's open child and adolescent unit were routinely punished with unmodified electroconvulsive treatment. Some governments (e.g. Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

) have since begun paying reparations to patients who suffered such treatments. The World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...

has called for a ban on unmodified ECT, and states no form of it should be used on children.

Asserted medical or professional complicity

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights'

Center for Constitutional Rights

Al Odah v. United States:Al Odah is the latest in a series of habeas corpus petitions on behalf of people imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The case challenges the Military Commissions system’s suitability as a habeas corpus substitute and the legality, in general, of detention at...

When Healers Harm campaign, health professionals were complicit in the torture and abuse of detainees during the so-called “war on terror” of U.S. President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

. Health professionals are those who are trained or licensed in a healing profession, including: medical doctors, psychiatrists, medical examiners, psychologists, and nurses. All of these professions have been implicated in the torture and abuse of prisoners in CIA secret prisons and in military detention centers, such as those in Guantánamo, Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

, and Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

.

Among other things, health professionals:

crafted abusive tactics and falsely legitimized their use;
advised interrogators on methods of abuse that would exploit prisoners’ vulnerabilities;
used medical procedures to harm prisoners;
gauged pain
Pain
Pain is an unpleasant sensation often caused by intense or damaging stimuli such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting iodine on a cut, and bumping the "funny bone."...

and monitored interrogations that risked leaving prisoners in need of treatment;
checked prisoners to certify that they were capable of surviving additional abuse;
conditioned medical or mental health treatment on cooperation with interrogation;
shared confidential patient information that was used to harm patients;
covered up evidence of torture and abuse; and
turned a blind eye to cruel treatment.

State licensing boards and the professional associations have the responsibility to uphold medical ethics and to hold medical professionals accountable for their participation in abuse. To date, none of these bodies has investigated – nor, in some cases, even acknowledged – abusive conduct by individual members of their professions. In 2009, after years of denial, the American Psychological Association

American Psychological Association

The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...

finally recognized that psychologists had engaged in torture. However, the American Psychological Association

American Psychological Association

has yet to acknowledge that psychologists were in fact integral to the Bush Administration’s torture policy. Some criticize the APA

American Psychological Association

for failing to respond to allegations of “collusion between APA officials and the national security apparatus in providing ethical cover for psychologists’ participation in detainee abuse."http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2009/06/29/open-letter-in-response-to-the-american-psychological-association-board/

Although the American Medical Association

American Medical Association

The American Medical Association , founded in 1847 and incorporated in 1897, is the largest association of medical doctors and medical students in the United States.-Scope and operations:...

has made clear that physicians should not be involved in interrogations of any kind, it continues to insist that it has “no specific knowledge of doctors being involved in abuse or torture,” despite widely known evidence to the contrary, including government documents and Office of Legal Counsel

Office of Legal Counsel

The Office of Legal Counsel is an office in the United States Department of Justice that assists the Attorney General in his function as legal adviser to the President and all executive branch agencies.-History:...

memos, a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross

International Committee of the Red Cross

The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...

and multiple accounts by survivors.http://armed-services.senate.gov/Publications/Detainee%20Report%20Final_April%2022%202009.pdf http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/olc_memos.html
Some other accounts of medical or professional complicity in torture include:

The SERE
SERE
SERE is a military acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, a program that provides military personnel, Department of Defense civilians and private military contractors with training in evading capture, survival skills and the military code of conduct...

("Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape") program's chief psychologist, Col. Morgan Banks, issued guidance in early 2003 for the "behavioral science consultants" who helped to devise Guantánamo
Guantanamo Bay detainment camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a detainment and interrogation facility of the United States located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The facility was established in 2002 by the Bush Administration to hold detainees from the war in Afghanistan and later Iraq...

's interrogation strategy although he has emphatically denied that he had advocated the use of SERE counter-resistance techniques to break down detainees. The New Yorker notes that in November, 2001 Banks was detailed to Afghanistan, where he spent four months at Bagram Air Base
Bagram Air Base
Bagram Airfield, also referred to as Bagram Air Base, is a militarized airport and housing complex that is located next to the ancient city of Bagram, southeast of Charikar in Parwan province of Afghanistan. The base is run by a US Army division headed by a major general. A large part of the base,...

, "supporting combat operations against Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters".
A 2005 report by Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...

suggested that torture was routine under the appointed Iraqi government. Human Rights Watch Report
Dr. J.C. Carothers, British colonial Kenyan psychiatrist, has been implicated in designing interrogation of Mau Mau prisoners.
Similarly, it has been implied that Interim Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

i Prime Minister Dr. Ayad Allawi violated his obligation to medical ethics whilst serving as Western European chief of secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....

for the Baathist government of Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

. However, the same sources allege that Allawi had abandoned his medical education at that point and his medical degree "was conferred upon him by the Baath party." http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040628fa_fact.

In fiction

Actor Michael Palin
Michael Palin
Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....

plays a medical torturer in Director Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...

's 1985 dark comedic dystopian film Brazil.
In the film adaptation of George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...

the main character, Winston Smith
Winston Smith
Winston Smith is a fictional character and the protagonist of George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The character was employed by Orwell as an everyman in the setting of the novel, a "central eye ... [the reader] can readily identify with"...

, is subjected to medical torture by the thought police
Thought Police
The Thought Police is the secret police of Oceania in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish thoughtcrime and thought-criminals, using psychology and omnipresent surveillance from telescreens to monitor, search, find and kill...

.
Actor Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...

plays Nazi medical torturer Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele
Josef Rudolf Mengele , also known as the Angel of Death was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University...

in Director Franklin J. Schaffner's The Boys from Brazil
The Boys from Brazil (film)
The Boys from Brazil is a 1978 British/American science fiction/thriller film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. It stars Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier, with James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen and Steve Guttenberg in supporting roles...

.
Actor Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

plays Nazi torturer dentist Christian Szell in Director John Schlesinger
John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger, CBE was an English film and stage director and actor.-Early life:Schlesinger was born in London into a middle-class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician...

's 1976 Marathon Man
Marathon Man (film)
Marathon Man is a 1976 thriller film based on the novel of the same name by William Goldman. The film was directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, and Laurence Olivier. The original music score was composed by Michael Small....

.
The film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American drama film directed by Miloš Forman and based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey....

, starring Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...

, depicts abuse of psychiatric techniques including electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy , formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown...

and lobotomy
Lobotomy
Lobotomy "; τομή – tomē: "cut/slice") is a neurosurgical procedure, a form of psychosurgery, also known as a leukotomy or leucotomy . It consists of cutting the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain...

.
In the popular series, "24
24 (TV series)
24 is an American television series produced for the Fox Network and syndicated worldwide, starring Kiefer Sutherland as Counter Terrorist Unit agent Jack Bauer. Each 24-episode season covers 24 hours in the life of Bauer, using the real time method of narration...

", various forms of medical torture (including hallucinogens, and injections) are utilized to obtain confessions and information from high- threat terrorists being interrogated in the fictional Counter-Terrorist Unit (CTU) of the United States.
In Anthony Burgess' book A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....

, Alex, the anti-hero of the book, undergoes a fictional medical torture program called 'The Ludovico Technique', in which he is given a nausea-inducing drug, strapped to a chair with his eyelids forced open and forced to watch hours of films of extreme violence and rape to condition him to associate feelings of nausea with rape and violence.

Sources

Dr. J.C. Carothers, M.B. D.P.M. 1954. The Psychology of the Mau Mau. Government Printer, Nairobi, Colony and Protectorate of Kenya.
Carolina Elkins. 2005. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya written by Caroline Elkins, published by Henry Holt, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. -Commentary and Criticism:...

. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 0-8050-7653-0.
Steven H. Miles, Abu Ghraib: its legacy for military medicine; The Lancet
The Lancet
The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals...

volume 364 issue 9435, page 725 (August 2004) http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol364/iss9435/full/llan.364.9435.review_and_opinion.30574.1
Related editorials:
- The Lancet editorial staff, How complicit are doctors in abuses of detainees?; The Lancet volume 364 issue 9435, page 637 http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol364/iss9435/full/llan.364.9435.analysis_and_interpretation.30569.1
- Harvey Rishikof and Michael Schrage, Technology vs. Torture; Slate
  Slate (magazine)
  Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
  
  , August 18, 2004. http://slate.msn.com/id/2105332/
- CNN editorial staff, Ethicist questions medical workers' role in abuse.; CNN
  CNN
  Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
  
  .com, August 19, 2004. http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/08/19/doctors.torture/
- John Carvel, Abu Ghraib doctors knew of torture, says Lancet report; The Guardian
  The Guardian
  The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
  
  , August 20, 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1287158,00.html
Mikki van Zyl, Jeanelle de Gruchy, Sheila Lapinsky, Simon Lewin and Graeme Reid, The Aversion Project—psychiatric abuses in the South African Defence Force during the apartheid era.; South African Medical Journal
South African Medical Journal
The South African Medical Journal is a monthly peer-reviewed open-access medical journal which has been published in South Africa since 1884...

volume 91 issue 3, page 216 (March 2001) http://www.mask.org.za/sections/AfricaPerCountry/southafrica/aversion.pdf http://www.gala.wits.ac.za/archives_a.htm
Related editorials:
- Paul Kirk, Apartheid army forced gay soldiers into sex change operations; Daily Mail & Guardian, July 28, 2000 http://www.q.co.za/news/2000/07/000728-sexchange1.htm
- Ana Simo, South Africa: Apartheid Military Forced Gay Troops Into Sex-Change Operations, The Gully, August 25, 2000 http://www.thegully.com/essays/africa/000825sexchange.html
- S. Predag, South African Gays Terrorized During Apartheid Era; Lesbian News, volume 26 issue 3 (October 2000)
Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot regime: Race, Power, and genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1975; Yale University Press, 2002. pp. 438–439. http://www.yale.edu/gsp/publications/slaughter.html
Joost R. Hiltermann. "Deaths in Israeli Prisons." Journal of Palestine Studies
Journal of Palestine Studies
The Journal of Palestine Studies is an academic journal established in 1971. It is published and distributed by University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies. The current editor is Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University....

. Spring 1990. Vol. 19: Issue 3. pp. 101–110.
Eliott Valenstein. Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness (Basic Books, 1986).
Stephen N. Xenakis. "From the Medics: Unhealthy Silence." The Washington Post. Feb. 6, 2005. p. B4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A359-2005Feb5.html

External links

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Medical ethics and international law

Asserted instances

Asserted medical or professional complicity

In fiction

See also

Sources

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