Click Here to Read: June was worst month for Army suicides, statistics show by Mike Mount on the CNN website on July 15, 2010.

Our efforts to restore ethics to our nation’s treatment of detainees and prisoners and to hold accountable those psychologists and other health professionals who created, supervised and implemented the program of abuse and torture are coming to a head. Two weeks ago, Physicians for Human Rights published an extraordinary exposé on the role of health professionals in creating a program of medical research on unwitting prisoners in order to assess the efficacy and ‘legality’ of abusive techniques, including water-boarding. (Full disclosure: I was a co-author of the report. It can be downloaded here.)

In response to our report, The New York Times ran a lead editorial, calling for a Congressional investigation, and hundreds of articles, editorials, and blog posts followed. We have spearheaded a demand for an investigation at the Office of Human Resource Protection (OHRP) that has been joined by a newly expanded coalition of individuals and groups. With the exposure of evidence of human experimentation in violation of the Nuremberg Code, our constituency has grown to include not only Human rights organizations, but academic, scientific and religious groups as well. Please add your name to the growing list, and sign our letter demanding an investigation here. We are sending OHRP an updated list of signers on a daily basis.

Of equal importance is the progress of the Gottfried-Duane Anti-Torture bill, which is moving forward in the New York State Legislature. This bill prohibits the participation of health care professionals in torture or any improper treatment of detainees or prisoners, and keeps health professionals from direct participation in individual interrogations. It also includes a duty to report such treatment with strengthened whistle-blower protections. Violators could lose their licenses to practice. For the second time in two weeks, an editorial in the New York Times strongly supported our efforts to prevent psychologists and other health professionals from participating in torture with impunity. The bill serves as a model for other states and efforts are underway to produce similar legislation in California, Illinois, and Massachusetts.

The Gottfried-Duane bill could be voted on in the Assembly as early as today. The Assembly is strongly Democratic and the bill is likely to pass.  A vote in the Senate immediately afterward is possible, and the Governor’s office has indicated support. However, the Senate is much more split, and it is difficult to predict the bill’s chances of passage. The bill has garnered strong support from many NY State Health Professional, Human Rights, and Prisoner Protection organizations. However, Senator Duane is reluctant to bring the bill for a vote if he is not confident of passage. And the New York Legislature is notorious for inactivity, especially if a bill does not have a wide supportive constituency. To ensure a successful vote, we need to be sure that Senator Duane amends the Senate version of the bill to accord with the Assembly version and brings it to the Senate floor for a vote quickly, once it has passed the Assembly.

If you are a New York State resident, I am asking you to do three things in support of this bill, as soon as possible. (If you are not a resident, please forward this to friends and colleagues in New York):

1) Please email Senator Duane (and his staff) (duane@senate.state.ny.us; cecelia@tomduane.com; denise@tomduane.com) and urge him to amend S. 4495-A to bring it in line with the Assembly version and bring the bill to the floor for a vote this week.

2) Sign the petition expressing support for the bill on the Physicians for Human Rights website. Your letter will be forwarded to your State Senator and Assemblyperson.

3) If you know the name of your State Senator and Assemblyperson, please call their offices and express support.  

And finally, on the fight to change APA policy on psychologists’ participation — I will soon be sending a second email addressing the APA’s continued complicity in protecting psychologists implicated in abusive interrogations, abusive detention conditions, and illegal research on prisoners. But for now, I would like to focus on these two efforts: 1) to press OHRP to do an investigation of medical research on prisoners, and 2) to pass the Gottfried-Duane bill in New York and hopefully use it as a model in other states.

With your help, we may finally be able to learn the full extent of detainee abuse, hold abusers accountable, and change the law to ensure that health professionals never again use their professional expertise to do such harm.

Feel free to post this email to other lists.

Best regards,
Steven

Steven Reisner, Ph.D.
Psychoanalyst and
Advisor on Ethics and Psychology
Physicians for Human Rights
225 West 15th Street, Apt C
New York, NY 10011
phone   212-633-8391
email: drreisner@gmail.com

Robert Galatzer-Levy is quoted in this article.

Click Here to Read: Andriani: Echoes of the Past: Some of the Underlying Nuances of Holocaust Trauma in Israel By: Cristina Andriani in the Armenian Weekly in the April 2010 issue.

Click Here to Read: Appendix: The Possible “Newtonian” Origin Of Beyond Psychoanalysis on the Larouche Planet website.

Click Here to Read:  Aaron Hilkevitch: 1912 – 2008: Psychiatrist in leftist causes: Volunteered for anti-fascist unit in Spain in ’30s

Click Here to Read:  Libel in Fact Magazine: The Challenge to the American Psychiatric Association: A secret of psychiatric diagnosis in the 1960s is revealed by John D. Mayer  in the Personality Analyst blog on the Psychology Today blogs on  May 17, 2010.

Barry Goldwater