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Yet human subject protections are codified in US law (45 CFR 46.101-46.124 - 2005) as well as codes of professional conduct - collectively called the Common Rule, applying to all federally funded human experimentation, including CIA and DOD practices.
None may be conducted without subjects' consent and unless safe and beneficial to their welfare. Research and experiments amounting to torture clearly are not, and thus violate US and international law as well as established medical ethics.
Despite Obama's January 22, 2009 executive order prohibiting most "enhanced interrogation techniques" and his rhetoric at the time, he's continued the most extreme Bush administration abuses, (including so-called "safe, legal and effective" ones) - what PHR concluded are crimes of war and against humanity. Claiming health professionals protect detainees through systematic monitoring "is not only inherently contradictory but also a perversion of centuries of health professional ethics."
PHR calls on the White House and Congress to investigate thoroughly and hold those involved accountable. It also recommends restoring previous War Crimes Act language, and urges strict policies be adopted that prohibit all forms of torture and improper treatment as well as ensuring the human rights of all those in US custody.
Final Comments
Under George Bush, torture became official policy. It remains so under Obama throughout America's offshore gulag on US bases, ships, facilities of complicit allies, and other secret locations worldwide.
He also absolved CIA torturers from prosecution, saying he wants to look forward, not back, so will do anything to protect them and the worst of their practices, denying their victims justice like his predecessor and those before him.
It's America's longstanding practice - exonerate the guilty, punish the innocent, and trash the rule of law and common decency. Obama succeeds with the best of them in upholding an unprincipled, degenerate tradition.
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