"Most horrible of all is knowing that medical personnel and psychologists violated the most basic ethics of their professions - Do No Harm - by participating in and helping to design "enhanced" interrogations designed to break prisoners. Some did break. Some were killed. This systematic torture focused on sensory and sleep deprivation, overstimulation, and dependency creation. Massive amounts of pain and fear were also included. For their part, psychologists "reverse-engineered" the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program - designed to help American soldiers and marines resist torture - as a means to teach interrogators how to employ torture against captives." -Meteor Blades, DailyKos

Yep. You heard that - psychologists used their expertise to design methods of torture used to break down prisoners.

"This is only the tip of the iceberg. This program was approved at the highest levels. ... It suggests that people had simply lost their ability to distinguish right from wrong." -Air Force Major David Frakt

What's worse is that the program continued to be used even after it was banned:

"Defense Department investigations of abuse had previously revealed that the program was used in a limited manner and only on high-value detainees, but the documents indicate that the program was far more widespread and that the technique was still used months after it was banned at the facility in March 2004. Detainees were moved dozens of times in just days and sometimes more than a hundred times over a two-week period." -Josh White, Washington Post

Shockingly eerie is the fact that these psychologists had such a central role in designing a program that so blatantly went against their code of ethics:

"Psychologists have been identified as key figures in the design and conduct of abuses against detainees in US custody at Guantanamo, the CIA's secret "black sites," and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Psychologists should not be taking part in such practices.

Yet a steady stream of revelations from government documents, journalistic reports, and congressional hearings has revealed that psychologists designed the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" techniques - which included locking prisoners in tiny cages in the fetal position, throwing them against the wall head first, prolonged nakedness, sexual humiliation, and waterboarding." -Psychoanalyst Stephen Soldz in a Sunday Boston Globe Op-Ed

It's outrageous that the APA is being complacent to the illegal and unconstitutional practices of the Bush administration to the extent that it's activities and positions go against their code of ethics. It seems like the upcoming APA conference is a perfect opportunity for the organization to come down hard in defense of their "Do No Harm" pledge and to realign its stance on enhanced interrogation. The convention is the 14th, so email the APA now, and tell them to resepct their own code of ethics.