The Ethics Committee recommendation rejects this and many other calls for change. If Council concurred with this recommendation, the Nuremberg Defense wouldl stay in the code for at least the many additional years of deliberation called for by the Committee.
The Ethics Committee's recommendation was met with withering criticism from members. After initially refusing to respond to critics, the APA President and Board, sensing a pending PR disaster, responded positively to a motion from the members of Council who wrote the 2008 resolution directing the Ethics Committee to act by this august. Now these resolution Movers, as they were know, the President and the Board have united behind another six month delay, directing the Ethics Committee to recommend changes in 1.02 by the February Council meeting. Notice that they entrust this important task to the same Ethics Committee that only weeks before concluded four years of effort by recommending no change.
In a typical APA fashion, the Ethics Committee suddenly saw the wisdom of what they had just rejected. Presumably, those committees that had weighed in heavily against change will, for the time being at least, miraculously discover its value.The association is set for another long wait to see if this promise of change is any more sincere than any of the others over the last our years.
Whether or not it ultimately gets reversed, the Ethics Committee's embrace of the Nuremberg Defense also was taken by many as yet another sign that the loyalty of the APA leadership to the military-intelligence establishment is greater than its loyalty to its members. After all, last September those members decisively rebuked the APA leadership by passing by a 59% to 41% margin a referendum declaring that psychologists, whether involved in interrogations or treatment of detainees, do not belong in detention centers violating international law or the Constitution:
"unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights"
[There is an exception for those psychologists treating US military personnel.]
The APA leadership, while nominally acknowledging the passage of the referendum and placing it "in effect" have treated it as an abstract statement with no direct action implications. They have undermined the clear sense of the voting members that psychologists do not belong at Guantanamo or other sites. This leadership has stymied efforts to apply the referendum to any actually existing detention facility, such as Guantanamo or Bagram, where indefinite detention without trial and other violations of human rights are still in effect.
In response to the disappointing Ethics Committee recommendation, leading to, at best, additional delay in removing the Nuremberg Defense from the Ethics Code, as well as the failure to fully implement the member-passed referendum, activists are discussing how to respond to what they view as an unacceptable bending of professional ethics to the wishes of the military-intelligence establishment. Some members are contemplating resigning, joining many who have previously taken that step. Others may hold their breathe and see if, this time, perhaps, APA leaders really mean change. Meanwhile there has been no action on the other major actions, including other essential ethics code revisions, recommended in the Psychologist/Human Rights groups Open Letter:
"1. Fully implement the 2008 referendum as an enforceable section of the APA Code of Ethics. This entails a public announcement that APA policy and ethical standards oppose the service of psychologists in detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Bagram Air Base, CIA secret prisons, or in the rendition program.
"2. Annul the June 2005 PENS Report due to the severe and multiple conflicts of interest involved in its production.
"3. Bring in an independent body of investigative attorneys to pursue accountability for psychologists who participated in or otherwise contributed to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. APA should also: (a) clarify the status of open ethics cases and (b) remove the statute of limitations for violations involving torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, so as to allow time for information on classified activities to become public.
"4. Develop a clear and rapid timetable to remove Sections 1.02 and 1.03 [the 'Nuremberg defense' of following orders] from the APA Code of Ethics. [We note that the APA Ethics Committee has stated that they will not accept a defense of following orders to complaints regarding torture; this statement is a welcome improvement but it is clearly inadequate as it is not necessarily binding on future committees nor does it cover abuses falling under the category of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.] Revoke the equally problematic Section 8.05 of the Code, which dispenses with informed consent 'where otherwise permitted by law or federal or institutional regulations,' and Section 8.07, which sets an unacceptably high threshold of 'severe emotional distress' for not using deception in the ethics of research design.
"5. Retain an independent investigatory organization to study organizational behavior at APA. Due to potential conflicts of interest, independent human rights organizations should be enlisted to select this investigatory entity. The study should address, among other things, possible collusion in the PENS process and the 2003 APA-CIA-Rand conference on the Science of Deception, attended by the CIA's apparent designers of their torture program [James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen] during which "enhanced interrogation" techniques were discussed. The study should explore how the APA governance system permits the accumulation of power in the hands of a very small number of individuals who are unresponsive to the general membership. It should also propose measures to return the APA to democratic principles, scientific integrity, and beneficence, including restructuring for greater transparency and the assimilation of diverse viewpoints."
Until these five actions are undertaken, the APA will still not have extricated itself from its close engagement with the Dark Side.
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