Doctors may still be used to interrogate

STATE COLLEGE, Pa., Sept. 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army might be ignoring recommendations from two major medical associations in continuing to use physicians to interrogate detainees, experts said.

Penn State bioethicist Jonathan Marks and Dr. Gregg Bloche, a Georgetown University law professor, said the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association both adopted positions in 2006 that said physicians should not be directly involved in any interrogation of any individual.

"According to them this is not what physicians should be doing, whether the interrogation is aggressive or not, or legal or not," said Marks.

Marks and Bloche, who is also an adjunct professor at the Bloomsberg School of Public Health and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said they obtained records under the Freedom of Information Act that show the Army still wants physicians to be engaged in interrogations.

"The Army is essentially telling physicians that during interrogations they are not acting as a healthcare provider, but as a behavioral science adviser," Marks said, noting the memo even suggests physician "monitoring might actually be helpful in preventing detainees from getting hurt."

Bloche and Marks present their research in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.