Don't let ethics get in our way

A new report in The Washington Post details the sharing of prisoners medical records with military interrogators in Guantanamo Bay, calling it "a breach of patient confidentiality that ethicists describe as a violation of international medical standards designed to protect captives from inhumane treatment." Nothing expressly prohibits the sharing of these files, but it seems a serious breech of ethics. The sharing would allow torturers- I mean, interrogators to withhold medicines and use phobias and family data in an attempt to extract information from a prisoner. The Red Cross discovered the practice about a year ago.

"That is a violation of ethical standards that are quite old and accepted," said Leonard S. Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, a Boston-based advocacy organization. "I don't think you would find any medical person who would say this is okay."

Steven H. Miles, a professor of bioethics at the University of Minnesota, said that using the information in interrogations of detainees would be a "clear-cut violation" of the Geneva Conventions.

"This is an enormously serious breach," said Miles, past president of the American Association of Bioethics. "You just can't do that."