Study: U.S. Torture Techniques Unethical, Ineffective | LiveScience
Prolonged sleep deprivation, forced nudity and painful body positions are some of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that the U.S. government approved after Sept. 11, 2001. Three doctors who advocate human rights argue that not only are these methods unethical, but the scientific basis used to validate them was flawed.
The trio, whose policy critique appears today (Jan. 6) in the journal Science, reviewed congressional records and documents from the Department of Justice and the CIA. They found that some of the evidence used to justify enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) came from studies of U.S. soldiers who underwent SERE training — for "survival, evasion, resistance and escape," exercises that included EITs and were meant to prepare them to survive capture and resist torture. Medical experts involved in those studies, which took place prior to the 9/11 attacks, concluded EITs were "safe, legal and effective," said Scott Allen, a professor of medicine at Brown University and co-author of the critique.