Probe urged of doctors' role in torture

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SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- Three California medical experts want an investigation of any U.S. military doctor linked to the torture of detainees since Sept. 11, 2001.

The probe was urged in a letter published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The letter was in response to a disclosure of such mistreatment in Iraq and Cuba published in the journal and other publications in July.

"There is now sufficient published evidence in professional and public journals that physicians, psychologists, and perhaps other healthcare professionals have abetted or directly participated in interrogation activities which are prohibited by accepted professional ethical codes," said Dr. Philip Lee, a professor at both Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco.

The other experts seeking the probe are Dr. Marcus Conant, a professor at UC San Francisco, and Steve Heilig, co-editor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics and a longtime public health advocate with the San Francisco Medical Society.