Bioethicist Steven Miles Responds to Latest American Psychological Association Board Letter on Interrogations Policy
June 18th, 2009
Bioethicist Steven Miles sends the following response to yesterday’s letter from the American Psychological Association Board on the association’s interrogations/torture policies:
June 18, 2009
APA Board of Directors
Re: Your Open Letter to APA Membership
of June 18, 2009 on Psychologists and TortureDear Board,
I have been extensively involved in studying the issue of health professional involvement in abusive interrogations in the war on terror prisons. Your June 18, 2009 letter to the APA membership is a welcome but incomplete shift of APA policy.
It is welcome because it states that the APA has retreated from its untenable insistence that no psychologists were involved in torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. This official acknowledgment is new but the fact of these abuses has been established for several years. Speaking in their official capacities, APA’s former President, Dr. Gerald Kootcher, and its ethics officer, Dr. Stephen Behnke, have repeatedly issued ungrounded denials of these facts despite having ample information that those denials were false.
The APA Board’s letter was also welcome because, it states that the 2008 petition, Psychologists and Unlawful Detention Settings with a Focus on National Security, would be fully integrated into APA policy. That resolution was openly opposed by the Defense Department operating those same detention centers. After passage by the membership who voted in accordance with APA by-laws, APA governance gave that position second class status by asserting that since it did not pass through the conventional internal ethics policy making process, it could not serve as a standard for assessing the conduct of APA members.
The current Board’s position, as outlined in the June 18 letter, remains incomplete.
1. It lays out a process for incorporating the 2008 referendum into APA policy but it does not give a timeline.
2. Its newly passed “No defense to torture under the APA ethics code” statement (http://www.apa.org/releases/ethics-statement-torture.pdf) is a hastily written statement that does not define torture; ignores the concept of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; does not address the duty to report observing such abuse and so on.
3. It does not acknowledge the failure of the APA to manage the conflicts of interest in membership and process of the PENS Task Force. These failures stained the reputation of APA, divided APA’s membership, separated APA from the larger community of health oriented professionals and produced a report that was tailor made to the design, policies, and operation of previous United States system of abusive interrogations.
4. It states the APA will monitor and will investigate reports of ethical misconduct by APA members but it does not address the status of previously filed allegations.
This progress and these omissions suggest steps that the APA Board should now take.
1. It should entirely retract the PENS Task Force report.
2. It should reassign Dr. Stephen Behnke from the position of Director of the APA Ethics Office. His credibility in that position has been irredeemably compromised by his management of the conflicts of interest of the PENS Task Force, his repeated categorical denials of psychologist and APA member involvement in abusive interrogations, and his Office’s handling of formal allegations about the APA member’s complicity with abusive interrogations. He cannot serve effectively in his position.
3. It should endorse the Declaration of Madrid and Declaration of Tokyo, substituting in the word psychologist for psychiatrist or physician. Perhaps this could be a provisional time-limited measure until APA reconstitutes a process for creating a specific standard for psychologists.
4. The Ethics Office should clarify the status of proceedings and findings (if upheld) of psychologists against whom formal complaints of complicity with abusive interrogation have been filed.
These steps would go a long way to putting the APA on a new direction. They would create a clean break with its past. They would bring the APA back into the international community of health professions. They would enable it to speak with moral authority on behalf of psychologists who are endangered by speaking out against torture in other nations.
Sincerely,
Steven H. Miles, MD
Professor of Medicine
Center for Bioethics
University of Minnesota
N504 Boynton
410 Church Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-624-9440
miles001@umn.edu
Entry Filed under: Accountability,APA,Psychology,Torture
3 Comments
1. Sharon Gadberry | June 19th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Thank you for your complete, concise and compelling response to the APA statement. It truly is “too little, too late” . What is needed is a complete reform of the APA organization, starting with a strong policy and extending to removal of the individuals involved in perverting the ethics system, and acting on the longstanding ethics accusations that have been filed by individual members and continue to be ignored by the Ethics committee.
2. Michael D. Knox, Ph.D. | June 20th, 2009 at 11:00 am
The Ethics of Preparing Soldiers to Return to Combat
The APA Board statement failed to mention another even more prevalent way that psychologists participate in unethical activities for their government. When soldiers are having strong emotional reactions to killing and injuring other human beings, they are often “treated” by psychologists. A major role for these psychologists is to help the soldier overcome concerns, which reflect their basic humanity, and get them back to the business of war. That business, which military psychologists provide support for, involves killing, maiming, inflicting pain, and creating refugees, orphans, and psychological dysfunction. War is essentially torture for hundreds of thousands of people.
Neither Iraq, Afghanistan, nor Pakistan has attacked the U.S. or its allies. All psychologists who participate directly or indirectly in the current U.S. wars and in war crimes should be held accountable for their unethical behavior, expelled from APA, and be stripped of their licenses to practice psychology.
It is appropriate that the board’s letter concludes by reminding us of psychology’s longstanding commitment to the protection of human welfare. When it comes to causing pain and killing people, psychology must set a higher standard than the American government. We should be leaders and not followers.
Michael D. Knox, Ph.D.
APA Fellow
Tampa, FL
3. Marsha V. Hammond, PhD | June 20th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Here is the video, made by a psychologist, outlining the main points of what has taken place:
Yes, unfortunately, the removal of Stephen Behnke,PhD, JD, head of APA’s Ethics Office, is in order. However, this will not somehow magically reform or undo what has taken place at APA. The intentions ran too deep, were too clandestine, and were too unamenable to the APA membership who have spoken vigorously about these issues for over 5 years now.
YES, what is the status of the filings made on psychologists within the military at the current time? This is an important question because the APA Board may have been playing with a ‘deadline’ prior to releasing the statement on June 18, 2009, that, essentially, it was shoved into releasing. When Bryant Welch made his statement on The Huffington Post, the APA Board blinked but make no mistake, they timed their blinking.
Here is the pertinent info re: the ‘timed’ release of the APA Board June 18, 2009 Statement:
“At issue is whether the the Statute of Limitations (5 years for non-members, 4 years for members) has expired for offenses committed during the 2002-2004 and prior period. Whether the delays that occurred in the release of APA memo until this time were a function of the SOL period remains unknown. Only BOA members can speak to this issue. …”
This statement was made by the following psychologist and circulated to listservs thruout APA: Psychologists for Social Responsibility: From: Anthony Marsella Sender: psysr-announce@yahoogroups.com : http://www.psysr.org PsySR is an independent organization of psychologists and others committed to promoting peace and social justice