Doctors and abuse at Abu Ghraib

The Christian Science Monitor rounds up news on reports that US military doctors were involved in everything from planning the abuses at Abu Gharib to covering them up.

Reuters, meanwhile, reports that an article (subscription required) published in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, alleges that US military doctors played a role in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The report, written by University of Minnesota bioethicist Steven Miles, cites evidence that some doctors "falsified death certificates to cover up killings and hid evidence of beatings."
"The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations," the University of Minnesota professor said. One detainee, who collapsed after a beating, was revived by medics so that the abuse could continue, Miles said. "Army officials stated that a physician and a psychiatrist helped design, approve and monitor interrogations at Abu Ghraib," he wrote in his study based on evidence from US congressional hearings, sworn statements of detainees and soldiers, medical journal accounts and aid agency information.
The Voice of America reports that the Department of Defense has called Dr. Miles statements "inaccurate."
In a written statement, it says that although its own investigation has not been completed, it has no evidence that American military medical staff collaborated with abusive behavior by army interrogators or guards, failed to render medical aid to injured detainees, or falsified death certificates.
But an editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer points out that military medical personnel were "at best negligent in not reporting American abuse of prisoners at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison and, at worst, they participated in covering up the abuse."
Finally, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reports that Americans are becoming increasingly concerned about what incidents like the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib are doing to the image of the US abroad. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said the US is less respected in the world than it has been in the past, and that more than two-thirds of those who feel this way believe it is a "major problem" for the US. On the other hand, the Pew Center poll also shows that many Americans also believe the US is stronger militarily now than in the past.