A new report revealed that doctors were used to torture terror suspects post-9/11 at the order of the CIA and Department of Defense, Salon reported.
According to the Taskforce on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers, medical personnel in the military and intelligence fields "designed and participated in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and torture of detainees."
The new 269-page report titled "Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the 'War on Terror," researchers claim a "theory of interrogation" emerged, developed by psychologists to break down the suspects.
Researchers also condemned the Bush administration for deciding the protections of "unlawful combatants" were not covered by the Geneva Convention, leading to "cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment."
Dr. Gerald Thomson, a member of the taskforce and Professor of Medicine Emeritus at Columbia University, chided the doctors for their participation in torture.
"The American public has a right to know that the covenant with its physicians to follow professional ethical expectations is firm regardless of where they serve," Dr. Thomson said in a statement. "It's clear that in the name of national security the military trumped that covenant, and physicians were transformed into agents of the military and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics and practice."
Thomson added that members of the medical community have "a responsibility to make sure this never happens again."
During their investigation, taskforce researchers used information from published accounts on force-feeding detainees, a Senate report from 2008 on the treatment of detainees, and a Red Cross probe of the CIA that was eventually leaked to The New York Times.
Thomson also referred to the findings as a "big striking horror."
"This covenant between society and medicine has been around for a long, long time - patient first, community first, society first, not national security, necessarily," he continued. "If we just ignore this and satisfy ourselves with the (thought that), 'Well, they were trying to protect us,' when it does happen again we'll all be complicit in that."
However, Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale -- a Defense Department spokesman -- referred to the report as "wholly absurd."
"The health care providers at the Joint Strike Force who routinely provide not only better medical care than any of these detainees have ever known, but care on par with the very best of the global medical profession, are consummate professionals working under terrifically stressful conditions, far from home and their families, and with patients who have been extraordinarily violent," he claimed.
