Writing to our doctors

Here is a copy of the letter I am sending to my doctors:

Dear Dr. [xx],

I am your patient at [medical group name]. I am writing to call your attention to an article in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, ( http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/352/1/3 ) reviewing evidence that military doctors have participated in torture of detainees. Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/07/docs_and_torture/index.html ) provides this summary of the article:

The NEJM article accuses doctors of violating professional ethics by passing detainee health records to military intelligence and by watching interrogation sessions. It also describes collaboration with interrogators in which doctors and medics helped set the parameters for abuse, determining 72-hour "sleep management" schedules for detainees, approving bread and water regimens for those subjected to "dietary manipulation," and sanctioning long periods of isolation.

At Guantánamo and at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, doctors had the final say on the interrogation plan for each detainee. "The medic would screen him and ensure he was fit for interrogation ... After that the medic would watch over the interrogation from behind the glass," the article quotes a military police commander as saying.

The AMA has an official policy on torture (http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/8421.html). It reads, in full:

Torture refers to the deliberate, systematic, or wanton administration of cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatments or punishments during imprisonment or detainment.

Physicians must oppose and must not participate in torture for any reason. Participation in torture includes, but is not limited to, providing or withholding any services, substances, or knowledge to facilitate the practice of torture. Physicians must not be present when torture is used or threatened.

Physicians may treat prisoners or detainees if doing so is in their best interest, but physicians should not treat individuals to verify their health so that torture can begin or continue. Physicians who treat torture victims should not be persecuted. Physicians should help provide support for victims of torture and, whenever possible, strive to change situations in which torture is practiced or the potential for torture is great. (I, III) [my emphasis]

Given this information, I call on you and the other members of your practice to issue a statement condemning any participation by medical personnel in the torture of detainees.

I urge you to contact your medical associations and your colleagues and tell them that you oppose the participation of doctors in torture and that the medical community must come together now and take a strong stand against torture.

And I urge you to contact your patients and ask them to do the same.

Only by taking action personally can you adhere to the AMA's guidelines regarding torture, as quoted above, and to the Hippocratic Oath. Every day that we do not take action on this issue is another day we must all look in the mirror and admit that we, too, are torturers.

I realize there are physician's organizations actively working to stop these practices. You may even belong to one. But if you are anything like me and most of the other people I know, you leave the 'politics' to the organization. I feel quite reluctant sending this letter, as though it's somehow inappropriate to ask you what, as a doctor, you are doing to keep doctors from participating in torture. Who am I to ask? But I am asking, because I believe that only by holding each other personally responsible for what is being done in our name will we act to stop it.

I don't want to be a torturer. Do you?

Yours very sincerely,
[Biscuit]