Research Catalog

Title

Interrogations, forced feedings, and the role of health professionals : new perspectives on international human rights, humanitarian law, and ethics / [edited by Ryan Goodman and Mindy Jane Roseman].

Publication

Cambridge, Mass., U.S. : Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School, c2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Goodman, Ryan
• Roseman, Mindy Jane
• Harvard Law School. Human Rights Program

Description

xi, 228 p.; 23 cm.

Summary

"The involvement of health professionals in human rights and humanitarian law violations has again become a live issue as a consequence of the U.S. prosecution of conflicts with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Iraq. Health professionals-including MDs trained in psychiatry and PhDs trained in behavioral psychology-have reportedly advised and assisted in coercive interrogation. Health professionals have also been involved in forced feedings. Such practices would not be unique to the United States nor the most extreme forms of abuse in the world. The direct involvement of medical professionals in torture, covering up extrajudicial killings, and other extreme conduct is a phenomenon common to many societies and periods of national crisis. Indeed, the widespread and repeated nature of this problem has led to the development of important legal and ethical codes on the subject. Those codes, however, are notoriously insufficient in many cases. A reexamination of the international norms, as developed in human rights law, humanitarian law, and professional ethics can shed light on these issues. However, in addition to those instruments, the struggle to end such violations requires understanding human behavior and the role of formal and informal institutional pressures. In this volume, a wide range of prominent practitioners and scholars explore these issues. Their insights provide significant potential for reforming institutions to assist health professionals maintain their legal and ethical obligations in times of national crisis."--Pub. desc.

Subject

• Torture > ethics
• Prisoners
• Military Medicine > ethics
• Human Rights Abuses > ethics
• Civil Rights > legislation & jurisprudence
• Ethics, Medical
• Torture > Moral and ethical aspects
• Medical ethics
• Psychiatric ethics
• Medical care > Political aspects
• Prisoners > Moral and ethical aspects
• Human rights
• United States

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Places that medical ethics can't find : preliminary observations on why health professionals fail to stop torture in overseas counterterrorism operations / Stephanie Erin Brewer and Jean Maria Arrigo -- Looking back, thinking ahead : the complicity of health professionals in detainee abuse / Jonathan H. Marks -- Complicity and the illusion of benefice / Leonard S. Rubenstein -- Further consideration regarding interrogations and forced feeding / Edmund Howe -- Closing eyes to atrocities : U.S. psychologists, detainee interrogations, and the response of the American Psychological Association -- Responding to food refusal : striking the human rights balance / James Welsh -- Health professionals and dual loyalty : a World Medical Association and Israeli Medical Association perspective / Yoram Blachar and Malke Borrow -- Clinical and operational issues in the medical management of hunger strikers / Scott Allen and Hernán Reyes -- Interrogation and human rights : irreconcilable or interdependent? / Steven Kleinman.

ISBN

• 9780979639524
• 0979639522

OCLC

261175206

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library