Doctors and torture

There is another article today in the Washington Post about the involvement of doctors with torture. This is in a country where its president has recently said: "We do not torture." The article this AM was about the stance of American Psychiatrists basically condemning the involvement of military psychiatrists and psychologists in the interrogation of prisoners. Stating in no uncertain terms that this was unethical. Why did they have to condemn activity that we aren't doing? Huh?

Why is this news? We have known for a long time that this has been going on. The following is from an article by Robert Jay Lifton, M.D. from our flagship journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, over a year ago:

There is increasing evidence that U.S. doctors, nurses, and medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Such medical complicity suggests still another disturbing dimension of this broadening scandal.

I really don't know what to do anymore. When I wake up in the morning and it suddenly rushes on me that I live in a country that is torturing people both physically and mentally, that doctors and nurses and medics are involved in this activity, and I am doing nothing about it. Sometimes it just makes me ill.