The role of doctors in torture: from middle age to Abu Ghraib

Abstract

Torture is a practice as old as humanity itself, although its objectives have changed throughout history. The participation of medical personnel in the exercise of torture has been common in some historical moments. During the middle ages, torture was the instrument used by justice to obtain confessions, but doctors did not regularly participate in it. For the first time, the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (1532) is the body of laws that requires the official presence of a doctor in the torture sessions, acting as another judicial official. The twentieth century represented a drastic change in the role of the health professional in relation to torture, who began to play an active part in this process. Torture methods changed drastically, going from the classic methods of inflicting physical pain, to other more modern methods, in which psychological and psychiatric techniques and psychotropics predominate. The Nazi doctors applied mind control techniques with psychotropic drugs to prisoners. In dictatorial countries, such as the former Soviet Union and China, punitive psychiatry was used to punish political dissidents, and in the South American dictatorships, doctors actively collaborated in the exercise of physical torture. The paradigm of torture changed with the events of Abu Ghraib, and the use of torture was justified by the democratic authorities as a war weapon against terrorism. To avoid the participation of health professionals in torture, additional actions are required, such as promoting extra ethical training in doctors, and close monitoring for compliance with all international covenants, agreements and treaties against torture.