Law & Order SVU on doctors and US torture
Crooks & Liars has the clip from October’s episode of Law & Order SVU on a US doctor’s torture in Iraq. I wish I could embed, but go watch it here. It is extremely moving.
Add comment November 19th, 2007
Archive for November, 2007
Cafferty: Leaked Inside Look At Guantanamo ‘A Little Scary’
CNN’s Cafferty on the leaked Guantanamo Standard Operating Procedures manual:
Add comment November 18th, 2007
A World Without Writers?
What would the movies be like without writers?
[h/t Escahaton.]
1 comment November 18th, 2007
Leaked Guantanamo Document Confirms Routine Use of Isolation as Psychological Torture. Will APA Protest?
Recently a major 2003 Guantanamo Standard Operating Procedures [SOP] manual was posted on the wikileaks web site. Ignored by most major sources for a week, Reuters, has picked up on the leak Thursday and the New York Times on Friday. The Reuters article comments especially on two revelations from the SOP. The first of these revelations, which is also the focus of the New York Times piece, is that, despite claims to the contrary, the US was hiding detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC]:
“The manual also indicates some prisoners were designated as off limits to visitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross, something the military has repeatedly denied.”
We have here additional evidence that, when it comes to what occurs in US detention facilities, no claims of the government should be taken as true without independent confirmatory evidence.
The second revelation from the SOP, mentioned in passing by Reuters, concerns the routine use of isolation and sensory deprivation on Guantanamo detainees in order to weaken them and make them ready for interrogations. As Reuters reports:
“It says incoming prisoners are to be held in near-isolation for the first two weeks to foster dependence on interrogators and ‘enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process.’ Styrofoam cups must be confiscated if prisoners have written on them, apparently because prisoners have used cups to pass notes to other captives. ‘If the cup is damaged or destroyed, the detainee will be disciplined for destruction of government property,’ the rules say.”
Here is the actual language from the SOP [Section 4-20, p. 4.3] demonstrating the precision with which abuse was administered. In fact, it makes clear that Reuters got it partially wrong in that the “near-isolation” was to last at least four weeks, not two, and that it could be continued indefinitely, beyond the four-week (30 day):
“a. Phase One Behavior Management Plan (First thirty days or as directed by JIG [Joint Intelligence Group]). The purpose of the Behavior Management Plan is to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process. It concentrates on isolating the detainee and fostering dependence of the detainee on his interrogator. During the first two weeks at Camp Delta, classify the detainees as Level 5 and house in a Maximum Security Unit (MSU) Block. During this time, the following conditions will apply:
(1) Restricted contact: No ICRC or Chaplain contact
(2) No books or mail privileges
(3) MREs for all meals.
(4) Basic comfort items only:
(a) ISO Mat
(b) One blanket
(c) One towel
(d) Toothpaste/finger toothbrush
(e) One Styrofoam cup
(f) Bar of soap
(g) Camp Rules
(h) No Koran, prayer beads, prayer cap.
(5) Mail writing and delivery will be at the direction of the J-2.
b. Phase Two Behavior Management Plan. The two-week period following Phase 1 will continue the process of isolating the detainee and fostering dependence on the interrogator. Until the JIG Commander changes his classification, the detainee will remain a Level 5 with the following:
(1) Continued MSU
(2) Koran, prayer beads and prayer cap distributed by interrogator
(3) Contacts decided by interrogator
(4) Interrogator decides when to move the
detainee to general population.”
Isolation has long been a preferred measure of abuse in US detentions. As Mark Benjamin pointed out last July in Salon, isolation and the associated sensory deprivation, not waterboarding or other more commonly discussed techniques, is the CIA’s favorite form of torture. It has been know for years that isolation was authorized for use at Guantanamo, even after some of the harshest techniques used in 2002 and known to have been deployed against Mohammed al-Qahtani were stopped from routine use and restricted in 2003 to the so-called “varsity program.” Isolation was one of the interrogations techniques authorized by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in his April 16, 2003 memo. However, that memo gives a sense that isolation is a severe, possibly illegal, technique:
“Caution: the use of isolation as an interrogation technique requires detailed implementation instructions, including specific guidelines regarding the length of isolation, medical and psychological review, and approvals for extension of the length of by the appropriate level in the chain of command. This technique is not know to have been generally used for interrogation purposes for longer than 30 days. Those nations that believe that detainees are subject to POW protections may view use of this technique as inconsistent with the requirements of Geneva III, Article 13 which provides that POWs must be protected against acts of intimidation; Article 14 which provides that POWs are entitled to respect for their person; Article 34 which prohibits coercion and Article 126 which ensures access and basic standards of treatment. Although the provisions of Geneva are not applicable to the interrogation of unlawful combatants, consideration should be given to these views prior to application of this technique.”
The Guantanmo SOP now provides official documentation that, at the time of the Rumsfeld memo and despite its warnings regarding the techniques’ potential illegality and physical and psychological dangers, isolation was routinely used by the Defense Department at Guantanamo on all new detainees. The Rumsfeld memo complements the SOP in that it documents the central role of “medical and psychological review,” and, thus, medical and psychological personnel in the administration of this technique.
Isolation is as damaging as other, more prominent, abusive interrogation techniques. The recent Physicians for Human Rights-Human Rights First report, Leave No Marks: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality, details the negative effects of isolation and sensory deprivation:
“People who are exposed to isolation for the first time develop a group of symptoms that include ‘bewilderment, anxiety, frustration, dejection, boredom, obsessive thoughts or ruminations, depression, and, in some cases, hallucination’….
Prolonged isolation has been demonstrated to result in increased stress, abnormal neuroendocrine function, changes in blood pressure and inflammatory stress responses….
Findings from clinical research performed by prominent psychologists such as Dr. Stuart Grassian and Dr. Craig Haney, highlight the destructive impact of solitary confinement. Effects include depression, anxiety, difficulties with concentration and memory, hypersensitivity to external stimuli, hallucination and perceptual distortions, paranoia, suicidal thoughts and behavior, and problems with impulse control” [p. 32].
These findings regarding negative effects make clear that attempts to prevent torture and detainee abuse need to curtail the use of isolation to an absolute minimum, only potentially acceptable when needed for temporary management of unruly or dangerous detainees. It should never be sanctioned as a routine tool for “fostering dependence on the interrogator.” Such uses are immoral and are likely violations of the UN Convention Against Torture and the US Torture and War Crimes Acts. As thee PHR-HRF report argues:
“The medical impact of sensory deprivation and prolonged isolation supports the conclusion that both techniques of interrogation may be considered prosecutable acts of “torture”or “cruel or inhuman treatment”under the WCA or Torture Act because they cause “severe”and “serious” mental pain and suffering. The lasting depression and posttraumatic stress disorder that victims of isolation suffer constitute the prolonged and/or non-transitory mental harm required for mental pain to be considered severe or serious. Moreover, isolation and sensory deprivation in interrogations is likely calculated to “disrupt the
senses or personality.” “
Of relevance to those of us struggling to change American Psychological Association policy on psychologist participation in interrogations, the APA included clauses in its 2007 resolution against torture that allows continued participation in the use of isolation [and sensory deprivation] in certain circumstances:
“This unequivocal condemnation includes, but is by no means limited to, an absolute prohibition for psychologists against… the following used for the purposes of eliciting information in an interrogation process: … isolation, sensory deprivation and over-stimulation and/or sleep deprivation used in a manner that represents significant pain or suffering or in a manner that a reasonable person would judge to cause lasting harm.”
The APA inclusion of this carefully-qualified language led many APA critics, as well as certain reporters to wonder will psychologists still abet torture? It is therefore essential that the APA clarify the meaning of these apparent “loopholes. ”
Recent attempts by the APA to address the meaning of these “loopholes” raise the possibility that APA leaders, reeling under the impact of massive protests among members and criticism in the press, are looking to resolve any ambiguities in the 2007 Resolution. But so far, the APA leadership have failed to make a clear, unequivocal statement that this use of isolation at Guantanamo is unethical. In a recent widely circulated letter by the APA Director of Ethics, he stated:
The third and final category of techniques consists of techniques that may not be “used in a manner that represents significant pain or suffering or in a manner that a reasonable person would judge to cause lasting harm.” In my opinion, the description of these behaviors—isolation, sensory deprivation and over-stimulation, and sleep deprivation—suffered from not having adequate time to find wording that conveyed the authors’ intention. As I’m sure you recall, the discussions focused on the definition of these words and precisely what the implications of an absolute prohibition would be. As an example, an individual in detention may be separated and placed in a cell in isolation, in order to prevent that individual from colluding with another detainee in formulating a story that is consistent between them. Likewise, the regimen of a camp may require that detainees begin their daily routines at a very early hour. I believe that everyone will agree neither example would constitute impermissible isolation or sleep deprivation, but it is important to find language that clearly separates what is permissible from what is impermissible.
If the APA really intended that the “loophole” clauses allowing isolation in certain circumstances, was just to cover routine uses of the kind here mentioned, the APA should have no difficulty stating clearly and unequivocally that the use of isolation described in the Guantanamo SOP is unethical and that psychologists participating in that use are engaging in unethical behavior. Further, the APA should have no trouble coming up with clear language making these crucial distinctions.
In considering the APA’s positions, we should remember that the Chief Psychologist of the Guantanamo Joint Intelligence Group [JIG] at
In considering the APA’s positions, we should remember that the Chief Psychologist of the Guantanamo Joint Intelligence Group [JIG] at Guantanamo at the time of this SOP, was none other than Colonel Larry James, who the APA chose to introduce their 2007 Resolution on the Council floor. The SOP makes clear that the JIG was the military unit that decided how long isolation was used on each detainee to “enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process” The Rumsfeld memo makes clear that “medical and psychological supervision” were essential elements of this decision-making process. It is thus likely that the JIG’s Chief Psychologist was involved in determining exactly how much of this abuse a given detainee could tolerate. It hardly inspires confidence in the APA’s willingness to stand unequivocally against US torture and abuse that they selected this same Col. James to make the case for their carefully parsed and nuanced resolution. The APA has ignored extensive evidence from official documents and press reports raising questions about the activities undertaken by Col. James’ command during the time [January 2003 to Spring 2004] he was stationed there. The SOP provides additional evidence that Col. James’ command was engaged in routine abuse of detainees. Will the APA remain silent yet again?
In any case, it is time for the APA to stop word parsing and make clear, unequivocal statements about what in their view is and is not ethical. I, for one, feel that the use of isolation, as described in the Guantanamo SOP is well over the line into unethical territory. Does APA agree?
Beyond the APA and the role of psychologists, we need for Congress to take up the entire range of abusive interrogation techniques, especially including isolation and sensory deprivation. By focusing upon waterboarding as the litmus test abusive technique, the Congress, the press, and some human rights activists are ignoring the extent to which abuse is endemic in the US’ national security detentions. The CIA can continue its “enhanced techniques” without waterboarding; in fact reports say that they are already doing so. But to ban isolation and sensory deprivation would cut to the core of this country’s abusive treatment of detainees. Until the United States government takes this step, the U.S. will remain a torturing society.
4 comments November 17th, 2007
Mississippi Supreme Court, 1926: Waterboarding illegal torture
The Is That Legal? site informs us that, in 1926, the Mississippi Supreme Court found that “the water cure” [aka "waterboarding"] was illegal torture, and threw out a conviction obtained with its use:
If It Was Torture in Mississippi, Then It’s Definitely Torture, Right?
A final word or two on this “waterboarding as torture” issue.
Waterboarding, known ironically in earlier times as “the water cure”, remains — in the view of this administration and many supporters — not torture. And if it’s not torture, then it’s not cruel and unusual punishment or a violation of due process.
But here’s the rub.
In 1926, the Mississippi Supreme Court called the water cure torture. No qualifiers. No hedging. Just plain, good ol’ fashion torture . . . and therefore a forbidden means for securing a confession. These men were hardly a group I’d call *activist* or *liberal* and certainly not bent on subverting our country in the name of coddling criminals.
In a case called Fisher v. State, 110 So. 361, 362 (Miss. 1926), Mississippi’s highest court ordered the retrial of a convicted murderer because his confession was secured by a local sheriff’s use of the water cure.
Here’s the court:
“The state offered . . . testimony of confessions made by the appellant, Fisher. . . [who], after the state had rested, introduced the sheriff, who testified that, he was sent for one night to come and receive a confession of the appellant in the jail; that he went there for that purpose; that when he reached the jail he found a number of parties in the jail; that they had the appellant down upon the floor, tied, and were administering the water cure, a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country.”
Fisher relied on a case called White v. State, 182, 91 So. 903, 904 (Miss. 1922), in which the court took — as I understand history in those parts — the unusual step of reversing the murder conviction of a young African-American male, charged with killing a white man (it appears), because his confession was secured by *the cure*. The court said:
“. . . [T]he hands of appellant were tied behind him, he was laid upon the floor upon his back, and, while some of the men stood upon his feet, Gilbert, a very heavy man, stood with one foot entirely upon appellant’s breast, and the other foot entirely upon his neck. While in that position what is described as the “water cure” was administered to him in an effort to extort a confession as to where the money was hidden which was supposed to have been taken from the dead man. The “water cure” appears to have consisted of pouring water from a dipper into the nose of appellant, so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror, for the purpose of forcing a confession. Under these barbarous circumstances the appellant readily confessed . . . “
If “the cure” was seen as a barbarous form of torture in Mississippi in the 1920’s, I guess I’m at a loss to understand exactly how our attitudes about the process have progressed to see it as an acceptable means of interrogation 80 years later.
I suppose, in light of this administration’s position on waterboarding, that both Fisher and White are teetering on irrelevance. Truly amazing.
[h/t Daily Kos for this.]
What could be a better indicator of the extent to which we’ve descended into barbarism than that Congress and the Attorney General can seriously discuss whether waterboarding is illegal?
Add comment November 16th, 2007
Amnesty: NATO-led forces complicit in torture?
This truly is the age of torture. Amnesty International reports:
NATO-led forces complicit in torture?
People detained in Afghanistan continue to face torture and other ill-treatment, in particular by the country’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS).
Amnesty International, the UN and others have consistently reported cases of torture and other ill-treatment. Yet members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) – particularly those from Belgium, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands and Norway – have continued to hand detainees over to the NDS.
The abuses are taking place in the context of the ongoing conflict involving the Afghan government, international military forces, the Taleban and other armed groups.
Over the past two years, Amnesty International has received repeated reports of torture and other ill-treatment at the hands of the NDS, including detainees being whipped, exposed to extreme cold and deprived of food. Many of them have been arrested arbitrarily and detained incommunicado, without access to lawyers and families.
By transferring individuals to locations where they are at grave risk of torture and other ill-treatment, ISAF states may be complicit in this treatment. They are also breaching their international legal obligations.
The report Detainees transferred to torture: ISAF complicity? highlights: cases including allegations of torture by Afghan authorities of transferred detainees; incidents where ISAF states have lost track of transferred detainees; the difficulties in independently monitoring detainees in Afghan custody and the practice of on-the-spot transfers without documentation.
Amnesty International is urging all ISAF states to suspend all transfers of detainees and hold them in their custody until effective safeguards are in place. Meanwhile, ISAF countries should promote the reform of the Afghan detention system, including by facilitating training of detention officials. The Afghan government must ensure the end of all practices of torture, other ill-treatment and arbitrary detention in the country.
Add comment November 13th, 2007
PENS Task Force members Jean Maria Arrigo and Nina Thomas to talk in New York
An important upcoming event in the New York area :
PSYCHOLOGY, INTERROGATION & THE APA:
A CONVERSATION WITH
JEAN MARIA ARRIGO & NINA THOMASSection 9 of APA Division 39 [Psychoanalysts for Social Responsibility] is cosponsoring an informal panel with the NYU PostDoctoral prorgam in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy on Tuesday, December 18, to begin at 8 p.m. at NYU Kimmel Hall, 60 Washington Square South, Room 405.
This informal conversation features two members of the PENS (Psychological Ethics and National Security) Task Force, Jean Maria Arrigo and Nina Thomas, who will discuss their experiences participating in the task force, and where things have evolved since then. Jean Maria Arigo has been maligned by prominent APA officials following her description of procedural flaws in the PENS process. Her observations have supported previous reports of a complex relationship between APA and the Department of Defense/CIA, leading to the American Psychological Association remaining the one organization that has not banned the participation of its members in interrogation at military detention centers, as the AMA and the American Psychiatric Association have.
Nina Thomas has been at the forefront of these critical discussions.
We hope that this conversation, moderated by Neil Altman (author of the moratorium resolution, which would have banned psychologists’ participation in interrogation), will shed light on the difficult situation and the challenge to our professional ethics that the profession of psychology is now facing, and the overall complexity of the issues at hand. Many have raised questions on the Postdoc listserve with regard to this issue, and we are hoping that this joint venture between Section 9 and NYU Postdoc will help provide a forum to inform members of the greater community, as well as an opportunity to discuss all aspects of this issue with the leaders in this field. Organized by Section 9: Lu Steinberg & Steve Botticelli.
If you’d like to attend, please RSVP to Lu Steinberg at 212-757-0902.
2 comments November 13th, 2007
AMA ducks torture issue
We in the American Psychological Association are fond of pointing to the, in many ways superior policy statement on participation in interrogations of the American Medical Association. Bioethicist Steven Miles sends this note reminding us that the APA has avoided giving teeth to their policy:
The AMA continues to give the scandal of medical complicity in torture the silent treatment. The below resolution proposed came to the AMA house of Delegates this weeks. The AMA’s Committee on Constitution & Bylaws recommended that it not be adopted:
“Guidelines concerning physicians as members of Behavioral Science Consultant Teams, as well as their duties towards detained individuals, are already addressed by Department of Defense polices and federal law.”
The resolution did not even get a floor vote.
Steve Miles
*********************************************
AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION HOUSE OF DELEGATESResolution: 2
(I-07)
Introduced by: Michigan Delegation
Subject: Physicians’ Duty to Report Torture
Referred to: Reference Committee on Amendments to Constitution and Bylaws
(Jane C.K. Fitch, MD, Chair)
Whereas, The Geneva Convention prohibits the torture of prisoners and requires the reporting of torture; and
Whereas, Adherence to the Geneva Convention is required by armed service regulations; and
Whereas, The codes of ethics of the World Health Organization and the AMA prohibit any physician involvement in torture; and
Whereas, The Michigan State Medical Society Committee on Bioethics believes that the vast majority of physicians serving in the US military serve with an extremely high degree of ethics and professionalism, such that any deviation from these standards of ethics, among a few medical personnel, would constitute a serious and deplorable breach of these high standards and unfairly tarnish the reputation of other military physicians; and
Whereas, Previous, known military inquiries into detainee abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay have implicated some medical personnel but have not looked specifically at the role of medical personnel in these practices; and
Whereas, Those charged with teaching ethics to future physicians are handicapped in discussing the ethical standards expected of military physicians when they are unable to learn specific examples of both ethically exemplary and ethically questionable behavior under difficult wartime conditions; therefore be it
RESOLVED, That our American Medical Association ask the US Congress to conduct an investigation sufficient to assure that the US military is currently or has recently investigated the medical issues related to alleged detainee abuses, and the involvement or noninvolvement of medical personnel in such activities, especially that:
a. physicians are not being used as members of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) advising detainee interrogation procedures and
b. all detained individuals are treated according to the same standards of care expected for US military personnel in the theater (Directive to Take Action); and be it further
RESOLVED, That our AMA ask the US Congress to investigate that bodies currently involved in training military physicians are addressing the ethical codes and principles pertinent to the prevention of abuse of detainees, including where appropriate real examples drawn from recent events in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. (Directive to Take Action)
Fiscal Note: Estimated cost of $9,823 to communicate with Congress through letters, meetings and other mechanisms.
Received: 09/26/07
1 comment November 13th, 2007
What are the private contractors doing at Fort Huachuca?
Those of us fighting American Torture don’t have enough to do dealing with the military and CIA torturers. We know that much of the CIA torture program was developed and conducted by the Spokane-based firm Mitchell, Jessen & Associates. and CACI International is infamous for its role in Abu Ghraib, for which they are now being sued. Now we get word that many consulting firms, including CACI, are involved in the numerous “training” and other interrogation and intelligence activities at Arizona’s Fort Huachuca, the major interrogation training site for the Army.
While the nature of their activities are unclear there have been persistent rumors that torture is being taught at Fort Huachuca. After all, one of the top commanders at the Fort is Maj. Barbara Fast, who was intimately involved in the interrogations at Abu Ghraib during the scandals there.
Here is the complete article from The Business Journal of Phoenix, which is also available on Truthout:
Fort Huachuca Intelligence Center Draws Private Contractors
By Mike Sunnucks
Wednesday 07 November 2007
An increasing amount of U.S. intelligence work - including training related to aggressive interrogation methods - is being parceled out to defense firms making Arizona’s Fort Huachuca a major contracting hub.
The base, which sits near the Mexican border about 190 miles southeast of Phoenix, is home to the U.S. Army’s Military Intelligence Center.
Large contractors such as General Dynamics, which has an information technology division in Scottsdale; Lockheed Martin, L-3 Communications, which has operations in Mesa; CACI International; and ManTech International all conduct work at Fort Huachuca and have offices in Sierra Vista adjacent to the base. The companies posted a combined $79 billion in revenue in 2006.
There also are smaller companies - including AllSource Global Management, Integrated Systems Improvement Services, both based in Sierra Vista, and Phoenix-based Castillo Technologies, that do work intelligence work at the base.
Privatized intelligence work is an increasingly big business, said Pratap Chatterjee, program director for CorpWatch, a California-based watchdog group.
Chatterjee estimates that as much as 50 percent to 70 percent of U.S. intelligence work, training and technology is handled by private firms making it a $20 billion to $40 billion sector.
But it also is a controversial business.
Huachuca is one of the primary training centers for interrogation techniques, data collection and covert operations. Intelligence personnel trained at the Arizona base are stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Amnesty International and other human rights groups criticize U.S. policies related to prisoner interrogations and question whether certain techniques and how they are taught at Huachucha amount to or lead to torture.
Jumana Musa, advocacy director for Amnesty International USA, said interrogation techniques taught at Huachuca may include water boarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, phobia exploitation and sexual humiliation of suspects.
Musa said Amnesty also is concerned about the oversight and training of private contractors that do intelligence work at the Arizona base.
The U.S. Army and Bush administration deny the torture claims.
Fort Huachuca spokeswoman Tanja Linton, said contractors perform a wide variety of services at the base, including in the intelligence arena.
Linton said intelligence personnel are taught straight from Army field manuals and abide by applicable U.S. laws including those passed after Abu Gharib. She said training is “transparent” and is made open to the media and elected officials.
“Human intelligence being conducted in theaters of operation under this lawful policy is critical to saving American, coalition, and innocent lives and to enabling success in our military mission,” she said.
Some of the military intelligence firms contacted for this story did not respond to or declined request for comment.
Integrated Systems Improvement Services and AllSource list jobs available on their Web sites for military intelligence instructors, counterintelligence agents and instructors, intelligence analysts, technicians and linguists and intelligence collection trainers. The jobs often require top secret security clearance and military experience.
Others said their intelligence work at Huachuca is not directly related to interrogations, but that they provide technical and support services for intelligence training.
CACI International Vice President Jody Brown confirmed her company provides services to military and national intelligence agencies, but would not elaborate.
“We don’t discuss classified work with the media. It is illegal,” Brown said. CACI did provide interrogation services in Iraq up until 2005, and some of its workers were at Abu Gharib. The company said no CACI workers were indicted for prison abuse, and Brown said CACI no longer provides interrogation services.
ManTech spokesman Mark Root said intelligence makes up a large percentage of work that the Virginia company does for the Pentagon. Root said Mantech offers telecommunications support at “Ft. H.” and does not teach interrogation techniques.
ManTech also has family ties to Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi, whose father is a retired Army general and executive with the company.
Lockheed spokesman Keith Mordoff said employees provide technical support for Army intelligence at Huachuca.
“They are not involved in interrogation work,” said Mordoff, who declined to say how many employees Lockheed has at the base.
General Dynamics spokeswoman Jennifer Montesano referred questions about intelligence contracts to the Army base.
Two Roman Catholic priests (Steve Kelly and Louis Vitale) were sentenced to five months each in federal prison last month for trespassing on the base last year. The pair were delivering a protest letter to commanders about the possibility of torture techniques being taught there.
Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast is an intelligence commander at Huachuca and was a top Army intelligence officer in Iraq during Abu Gharib.
Some intelligence personnel trained at Huachuca were involved in abusive interrogation techniques at Iraq’s Abu Gharib prison, according to a U.S. Army investigation.
Add comment November 11th, 2007
Are teen sex and delinquenct linked?
The Washington Post has an article partially on a study claiming to debunk the finding that early teen consensual sex leads to later delinquency. By comparing pairs of twins, they suggest that the effect might even be in the opposite direction. While hardly definitive, it looks like a nice attempt to use sophisticated data analysis along with careful conceptual analysis to clarify important social issues.
The article also discusses other issues,including a claim that the relationship between IQ and breastfeeding, about which I blogged last week, may be artifactual:
A recent study by Scottish researchers asked whether the higher IQs seen in breast-fed children are the result of the breast milk they got or some other factor. By comparing the IQs of sibling pairs in which one was breast-fed and the other not, it found that breast milk is irrelevant to IQ and that the mother’s IQ explains both the decision to breast-feed and her children’s IQ.
I suspect neither of these studies is the last word on the breastfeeding-IQ link.
Another issue involves the benefits and risks of early parenting by poor black girls. For decades, Arline Geronimus has made the case that poor young girls are often better off having children young, in direct contradiction of our society’s obsession with preventing teen pregnancy. I was in a seminar with Arlene during our postdocs in 1986-87 and remember her making a quite plausible case. She apparently has continued to amass evidence over the 20 years since.
While none of these studies are definitive, they all emphasize the importance of careful research work before developing social interventions to address what, in some instances, are nonexistent problems.
Here’s the entire article:
Study Debunks Theory On Teen Sex, Delinquency
New Analyses Challenging Many Old AssumptionsBy Rick Weiss
Researchers at Ohio State University garnered little attention in February when they found that youngsters who lose their virginity earlier than their peers are more likely to become juvenile delinquents. So obvious and well established was the contribution of early sex to later delinquency that the idea was already part of the required curriculum for federal “abstinence only” programs.
There was just one problem: It is probably not true. Other things being equal, a more probing study has found, youngsters who have consensual sex in their early-teen or even preteen years are, if anything, less likely to engage in delinquent behavior later on.
That new analysis, a reworking of the same data the Ohio team used, is one of several recent instances in which a more precise parsing of data has begun to turn long-standing societal presumptions on their head. By bringing evidence to bear on complex social issues, these studies are forcing individuals and policymakers to rethink such hot-button topics as the benefits of breast-feeding, the risks of teen child-bearing and, in the latest example, the harms long presumed to result from teen sex.
Like many of the newer studies, the latest one — led by Paige Harden, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville — used the powerful techniques of behavioral genetics. The field specializes in studies on twins, research that can help tell whether behavioral traits are the result of genes or the social environment, and that has periodically stirred controversy when it has focused on the genetic underpinnings of criminality and intelligence.
But the specialty’s analytic methods can also help tell whether one behavior, such as early sex, is merely correlated with or actually causes a second behavior that is often found with it, such as delinquency. If two behaviors often exist in the same people but are found not to be connected by cause and effect, then a third factor is likely to be causing both.
That kind of finding can help identify better targets for prevention efforts, experts say.
“Behavioral geneticists have long sought to establish causal links between genes and complex behaviors. So it’s fascinating to see them use the tools of their trade to dispute widely held beliefs” about the social roots of some of those behaviors, said Erik Parens, a senior research scholar who has tracked the field intensively at the Hastings Center, a Garrison, N.Y., science and ethics think tank.
The latest example started when Dana Haynie, a sociologist at Ohio State, and her then-graduate student, Stacy Armour, published a study in February in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. They analyzed data collected from more than 7,000 children as part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a federally funded survey that in 1994 began gathering information about the health-related behavior of U.S. schoolchildren who were then in grades seven through 12.
Haynie and Armour divided the children into three groups based on when they first had sex: when they were younger, about the same age or older than the age at which most of their local peers lost their virginity. (It varies by region, but on average, U.S. children lose their virginity at age 16.) They also compiled information on graffiti-painting, shoplifting, drug-selling and other “problem behaviors” by those young people in later years.
Their conclusion: One year after losing their virginity, children in the early category were 20 percent more likely than those who started having sex at the average age to engage in delinquent behavior, even when several other relevant factors such as wealth, race, parental involvement and physical development were taken into account.
Those findings supported the widely held notion that loss of virginity at a relatively young age appears to, as Haynie and Armour wrote, “open the doorway to problem behaviors.”
Harden, at the University of Virginia, didn’t believe it.
Looked at from a similarly high altitude, she said, people might conclude that red meat is a health food, since people live longer in countries where more is eaten. Only when the issue is studied within one country does red meat’s link to chronic diseases appear.
Suspecting such an error in the Haynie study, Harden and three colleagues, including her adviser, Eric Turkheimer, an expert in behavioral genetics, studied more than 500 pairs of twins in the same national survey analyzed by the Ohio team. Because twin pairs share similar or identical genetic inheritances (depending on whether they are fraternal or identical) and the same home environment, twin studies are useful for seeing through false cause-and-effect relationships.
The team looked at identical twin pairs in which one twin initiated sex younger than the other, then team members tallied subsequent problem behaviors. If sex really adds to the chances of delinquency, then early-sex teens should end up delinquent more often than their later-sex twins.
“It turns out that there was no positive relationship between age of first sex and delinquency,” Harden said.
The way to reconcile that with the previous evidence of a link is to conclude that some other factors are promoting both early sex and delinquency, she said. In an e-mail, Haynie agreed. And the Virginia study, to appear in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, offers some clues.
It found that identical twins, who have the same DNA, were more similar to one another in the ages at which they lost their virginity than were fraternal twins, whose DNA patterns are 50 percent the same — an indication that genes influence the age at which a person will first have sex. Other twin studies have found the same pattern for delinquency.
Together, those findings suggest that some genes — perhaps, for example, those that increase impulsivity and risk-taking — may underlie both behaviors.
“You need to have some appetite for risk-taking to be a delinquent. And the same if you’re 13 and going to have sex for the first time,” Harden said.
Efforts to prevent delinquency can hardly take aim at people’s genes. But the Virginia study also indicates that social factors, as yet unidentified but perhaps involving relationships with family and friends, have an even bigger impact than genes on whether a child will become delinquent. Those are the things that should be identified and targeted by delinquency-prevention programs, said Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, co-director of Columbia University’s National Center for Children and Families.
“I wouldn’t be focusing on early sexuality . . . to alter rates of delinquency,” she said.
Perhaps most surprising, the Virginia study found that adolescents who had sex at younger ages were less likely to end up delinquent than those who lost their virginity later. Many factors play into a person’s readiness for sex, but in at least some cases sexual relationships may offer an alternative to trouble, the researchers say.
Even then, there are emotional and physical risks. Young adolescents, in particular, are less likely to use condoms and so are vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
But those are risks that other nations have mitigated with education, Harden and Turkheimer said, while U.S. educators wanting a piece of the nation’s $200 million “abstinence only” budget must adhere to a curriculum that links sex to delinquency and explicitly precludes discussion of contraception.
The new study “really calls into question the usefulness of abstinence education for preventing behavior problems,” Harden said, “and questions the bigger underlying assumption that all adolescent sex is always bad.”
Similar re-analyses have begun to undermine other conventional notions about health.
A recent study by Scottish researchers asked whether the higher IQs seen in breast-fed children are the result of the breast milk they got or some other factor. By comparing the IQs of sibling pairs in which one was breast-fed and the other not, it found that breast milk is irrelevant to IQ and that the mother’s IQ explains both the decision to breast-feed and her children’s IQ.
In another example, Arline Geronimus, a University of Michigan professor of health behavior who is now a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study, knew that babies born to teenagers are more likely to die in their first year of life than those born to older women.
“But that is an apples-to-oranges comparison,” she said. In New York City, for example, far more teen mothers live in Harlem than on the Upper East Side, she said, and “there are a lot of differences between those groups.”
So Geronimus looked more closely and got a different answer.
“If you compare Harlem teen moms to Harlem older moms, you find that the kids of the teen moms are actually less likely to die,” she said. The reasons include the fact that, unlike older women, poor teenagers are generally not juggling jobs and have older relatives to help.
It can make sense for poor women to have children when they are quite young, Geronimus concludes, and any effort to change that ought to treat it as an economic problem, not a health education problem.
In a different re-analysis, Geronimus made another counterintuitive finding. While it is true that, in general, teen mothers are less likely to breast-feed their babies than older moms, it is not true among poor women. Poor teenagers are actually more likely to breast-feed than poor older moms, in large part because the older women have jobs that don’t grant them the time to breast-feed or pump milk.
Because of that misconception, programs promoting breast-feeding have targeted teens instead of older women, Geronimus said. And they have taken aim, in part, at a concern that teenagers were believed to have: the cosmetic effects of breast-feeding on their breasts.
“So you’ve targeted the wrong population,” Geronimus said, “and come up with the wrong kind of intervention.”
1 comment November 11th, 2007