Docs who facilitate torture should lose their license

Pardon this entry if it is preaching to the converted. I hope most people have seen or read about the Red Cross report that outlines the role that American health care providers, including physicians, played in torturing detainees in Iraq and Cuba. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/world/07detain.html?scp=1&sq=red%20cross&st=cse) Doctors, psychologists, and PAs monitored torture episodes, including waterboarding, prolonged standing (of amputees), and confinement of people in small boxes. Some of their actions, such as monitoring pulse oximetry during waterboarding, directly facilitated torture.

Some may argue that these doctors' activities protected torture victims. However, I believe this line of reasoning dumbs-down the essence of medicine and ignores the true role of a doctor: to serve as an advocate for patients. Patients are people at their most vulnerable moments: they are sick for reasons they often do not understand. They may not be able to think clearly. They are cared for in hospitals and clinics foriegn to them, and trapped in health care systems that, around the world, are at best confusing and at worst harmful. And they are scared, even if they are not being tortured.

The role of a doctor is to serve as a champion for patients, and to ensure they thrive amid the chaos of illness. Making sure they do not die during torture does not meet this bar. Health care providers need to stop torture before it happens. If they cannot do this, they need to speak up and publicize what is happening. Unfortunately for the medical professionals involved in torture, speaking up or taking other actions to help their patients may have cost them their jobs or landed them in legal trouble with the military. While this is certainly an unenviable situation, I do not think these costs outweigh their duty as physicians and other medical providers to care for their patients.