On Bioethics Forum, Alessandra Hirsch discusses the involvement of psychologists in the CIA torture program, and compares their involvement to the roles that psychiatists and psychologists played in Nazi Germany. Were these experts simply assisting in torture, or actually performing it?
“The CIA’s actions share four main qualities with those of the Nazi doctors,” writes Hirsch. “1) they experimented on their detainees, 2) they perverted medical procedures, turning them into rape and torture, 3) they induced diseases in their detainees, and 4) they provided necessary medical care in order to enable future torture. These parallels, described in detail below, show that, if what the Nazi doctors did qualifies as torture, so too, do the actions of the health care professionals working for the CIA.”
Modern Day Mengeles (Bioethics Forum, January 12, 2015)