The APA’s safety certification legitimized torture and shielded its authorizers
Evidence
In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack, detainees were forcefully interrogated for actionable information to avoid future attacks. As previously noted, the Bush administration legally legitimized use of abusive forms of interrogation as not constituting torture by their narrow definition of torture. If it could be shown that the practices were also safe because they were monitored by health professionals, it would further legitimize their use and provide cover for authorizers of abusive methods and interrogators who implement them (Hoffman et al., 2015). It was also necessary to construe the methods as safe and not torture to evade international laws banning torture. The American Medical and Psychiatric Associations refused to participate in the interrogation program because it violated their ethical standards. The APA ended up providing the certification of safety. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2372
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- SEED: Angle for an essay: how professional-association complicity functions as a moral-disengagement multiplier — the certification of safety converts torturers into ‘monitored professionals.’
- SHARE: Worth sending to anyone professionally interested in research ethics, institutional complicity, or the APA torture scandal.