The American Friends Service Committee in California has an initiative to get the state to notify all California Licensed professionals that participation or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment is illegal and could result in prosecution:
Tell State Legislators: CALIFORNIA PROFESSIONALS MUST NOT ENGAGE IN TORTURE
In 2002, for the first time in American history, the Bush administration initiated a radical new policy allowing the torture of prisoners of war and other captives. Reports confirm that California licensed physicians, psychologists, and nurses have participated in these acts. Additionally, some California professionals have also failed to notify authorities when acts of torture have taken place.
As professional licensure and codes of ethics are regulated by states, California has the obligation to notify members of laws concerning torture that may result in their prosecution.
A broad coalition of medical, human rights and legal organizations are petitioning the State of California to inform its licensees of legal prohibitions against torture.
Please add your name to this effort:
We, the undersigned, urge the State of California to notify all professional licensees via newsletter, email and web-site about legal and professional obligations under Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, and the amended War Crimes Act which prohibit the torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment of detainees in US custody.
We, the undersigned, further urge the State of California to direct the all relevant California agencies to notify California licensed health professionals that those who participate in torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment may one day be subject to prosecution.
We, the undersigned, further urge the State of California request that U.S. Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency remove all California-licensed health professionals, including physicians and psychologists from participating in prisoner interrogation.
I haven’t mentioned avian influenza for a long time. But that doesn’t mean that the threat is gone. As Revere points out at Effect Measure, the threat is the same it always was. As in all things human, it’s a matter of probabilities ad possibilities, never certainties. Revere today points out that the appropriate public health response our government should be taking would be good for all of us:
Public health’s Maginot Line
Influenza A/H5N1 (bird flu) bubbles away this year much as in past years and public health professionals continue to wait with bated breath for the other shoe to drop. It could happen this year, next year or not at all. That’s the way the world is. Betting on “not at all” isn’t considered prudent by most people in public health, despite the fact that it’s possible. So given the uncertainty, what is the best strategy?
It is a bit disconcerting to see that the overwhelming preponderance of resources to pandemic preparedness resources are going into influenza-specific counter-measures, particularly vaccines and antivirals. If a pandemic doesn’t materialize not all of it is wasted. The boost that the threat of a pandemic has given to vaccine technology is real and significant and will pay off in the long run for diseases other than influenza for which vaccination is a reasonable preventive. So that’s good. Antivirals are more narrowly specific to influenza. Both are narrowly conceived, however, and are framed in terms of an uncertain event. But they are not the only reasonable response, nor even the ones where, if we were gaming out the possibilities, the likelihood of biggest pay-off would come. What are we suggesting?
In our view the biggest benefit comes with investment in public services which strengthen the community’s response to health threats of all kinds. Investment in routine public health — vital data and surveillance, substance abuse, elder care, maternal and child health, infectious disease control, human resources, social service support for the ill in the community and all the rest of it — is the place where we would put most of the money. If national planners are reluctant to give up the “magic bullet” approach of vaccines and antivirals then we are talking about additional investment. Given that every dollar invested in infrastructure is almost certain to pay off in multiple dollars of saved expense, we can afford this. And if a pandemic does come, it will pay off handsomely there, too. Vaccines and antivirals still depend upon the public health system. They don’t work at a distance.
We’ve been saying this for three years. It is not a change in attitude occasioned by a new threat assessment. On the contrary, our threat assessment has not changed at all. Only the virus changes. Whether the viral changes we are seeing is bringing us closer to a pandemic, farther away from one or are neutral in that regard we don’t know. So we have to respond in the most rational way.
The strategy of vaccines and antivirals appears to us a public health Maginot Line. Effective if the enemy comes that way. But if it goe