On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 05:08:43 -0700, Christopher Green wrote:
An interesting column in Inside Higher Ed by Laura Stark on the
current APA crisis, and beyond.
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/07/21/essay-why-scholarly-ethics-codes-may-be-likely-fail
There is one problem that Stark seems to ignore: although she
uses the APA development of a code of ethics as a case study
she fails to acknowledge that the American Medical Association
{AMA) and American Psychiatric Association (APA-MD) also
have a code of ethics for medical professionals and both issued
statements that health care professionals cannot be involved
in "harsh" interrogation or torture. Linda Woolf back in 2006
wrote on TIPS about this as well as what the APA was doing
(oddly enough, her post is in response to one by Chris Green); see:
https://www.mail-archive.com/tips%40acsun.frostburg.edu/msg18270.html
Today we know that medical professionals in fact participated
in these interrogations, for example, see:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-report-describes-medical-personnels-intimate-role-in-harsh-interrogations/2014/12/13/4cc9dfc8-8229-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html
But as the Washington Post says:
|The American Medical Association, in a statement Friday,
|said that "the participation of physicians in torture and coercive
|interrogation is a violation of core ethical values."
One apparent difference between the AMA and the APA-PHD
is that APA-PHD wanted to curry favor with the CIA and the DoD
and thus amended its code of ethics in order to comply to the
requests from the CIA and DoD regarding interrogation. At
the association level, the APA-PHD seems to have been operating
with self-serving intentions, greed, and bad faith.
The next question is why did medical/health professionals assist
the CIA et al in such activities (e.g., "rectal feedings")? Was this
an example of a Milgram style "submission to authority"? Was
it a purely selfish response on the part of medical/health
professionals,
that is, they like their job, they like their future in the
organization,
and did not want to jeopardize what seemed to them was a good
livelihood -- what's a little torture or unethical behavior among
colleagues if each can get away with it (using the "Nuremberg
defense") and keep their jobs and the promise future opportunities?
-Mike Palij
New York Universities
[email protected]
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