The human rights organization accused the Bush administration of conducting “illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody.” It also said the evidence of medical experiments could expose CIA and Bush-era officials to “additional legal liability” because the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel never provided lawful rationale for such illegal activity.

 

“The CIA appears to have broken all accepted legal and ethical standards put in place since the Second World War to protect prisoners from being the subjects of experimentation,” said Frank Donaghue, the group’s CEO. “Not only are these alleged acts gross violations of human rights law, they are a grave affront to America’s core values.”

 

One example discussed in the report revolved around the use of waterboarding on terrorism suspects. CIA medical personnel allegedly measured the effects of the simulated drowning technique and made adjustments, such as adding saline to prevent subjects from slipping into a coma or killing them accidentally. “‘Waterboarding 2.0’ was the product of the CIA’s developing and field-testing an intentionally harmful practice, using systematic medical monitoring and the application of subsequent generalizable knowledge,” reads the report.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Evidence Indicates that the Bush Administration Conducted Experiments and Research on Detainees to Design Torture Techniques and Create Legal Cover (Physicians for Human Rights)

Experiments in Torture: Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Program (Physicians for Human Rights) (pdf)

Human Experimentation at the Heart of Bush Administration's Torture Program (Jason Leopold, Truthout)

Bye, Bye Bill of Rights (by David Wallechinsky, Huffington Post)