CIA Experimentation on Detainees

A newly released white paper by Physicians for Human Rights reports that there is 'Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Program.'

According to the report:

PHR analyzes three instances of apparent illegal and unethical human subject research for this report:

1. Medical personnel were required to monitor all waterboarding practices and collect detailed medical information that was used to design, develop, and deploy subsequent waterboarding procedures;

2. Information on the effects of simultaneous versus sequential application of the interrogation techniques on detainees was collected and used to establish the policy for using tactics in combination. These data were gathered through an assessment of the presumed “susceptibility” of the subjects to severe pain;

3. Information collected by health professionals on the effects of sleep deprivation on detainees was used to establish the “enhanced” interrogation program’s (EIP) sleep deprivation policy.

The report indicates, that not only were detainees tortured (which we already know), but that the initial torture was heavily monitored by health professionals in order to establish a fake new definition of torture to try to cover their asses legally for subsequent torture sessions.

Of course in experimenting to see just how far they thought they could go while torturing, they actually managed to perpetuate additional crimes as human experimentation without the consent of the subject is, as the report states, illegal:

[It's] a violation of international human rights law to which the United States is subject; federal statutes; the Common Rule, which comprises the federal regulations for research on human subjects and applies to 17 federal agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense (DoD); and universally accepted health professional ethics, including the Nuremberg Code. Human experimentation on detainees also can constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity in certain circumstances.

You can download the report here (.PDF)

UPDATE: The New York Times calls for an investigation.
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