Oath Betrayed: America's Torture Doctors, Second Edition Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Words failed me when I completed reading Steven Miles' Oath Betrayed. They come no more easily now as I write this review. My dread in putting into words what and how the material in his book has made me feel as a health care professional is compounded by yet another "sucker punch." The latest blow came with the recent release of the four secret memos in response to litigation by the ACLU that were used by the Bush administration to justify torture. But silence of any kind, whether born of fear, intimidation, coercion, apathy, or revulsion is simply unacceptable. Malfeasance and evil deeds thrive on silence and when our words disappear, they must be found and employed.
Dr. Miles speaks of the silence and complicity of physicians and nurses. As a health care professional of 42 years, it pains me to have the knowledge of both brought to my attention and bubble up from those dark places where I like to keep things like horrors hidden. I am a health care professionals. By virtue of my commitment to the social good and special knowledge that I possess as a result of my education, I have a relationship with society that is unique. As part of my social contract I am expected to be trustworthy, competent and to do no harm. In return society affords me and all health professionals a special status. We are honored as caregivers and trusted to alleviate suffering and save lives. To be a health care professional is a privilege.
Other reviewers have most eloquently described and reviewed this book's first edition on medical complicity in the torture and deaths, and their cover-ups in the Afghanistan and Iran during the Bush years. They have spoken of its content and unfailing scholarship, as well as of Dr. Miles' passion. I am unsure how my own review will add to those voices except to say that I agree with all of them. The book is exquisitely written, and constitutes one of those "keepers" for one's bookshelves.
Perhaps my contribution can be that of celebrating those who did and who do breach the silences. It is easy to be horrified and express outrage from the comforts of our homes. It is easy to engage in moral obviation. It is far more difficult to speak up when faced with the withdrawal of one's professional and personal esteem and approbation. That requires the courage, not only to overcome fear and aversion to do what is morally right, but to face the anger and hateful slurs of those who would attribute disloyalty or lack of patriotism for our actions when we speak.
So yes, this book is about the most odious aspects of humanity and the cowardly silence of many. But it also stands as a celebration of those few in this book who had the courage to fight the silence and expose it. The book, even by virtue of having been researched and written by this brave man gives the rest of us hope.


Click Here to see more reviews about: Oath Betrayed: America's Torture Doctors, Second Edition

The news that the United States tortured prisoners in the war on terror has brought shame to the nation, yet little has been written about the doctors and psychologists at these prisons. In Oath Betrayed, medical ethics expert and physician Steven H. Miles tells how doctors, psychologists, and medics cleared prisoners for interrogation, advised and monitored abuse, falsified documents--including death certificates--and were largely silent as the scandal unfolded. This updated and expanded paperback edition gives newly uncovered details about the policies that engage clinicians in torture. It discusses the ongoing furor over psychologists' participating in interrogations. Most explosively this new edition shows how interrogation psychologists may have moved from information-gathering to coercive experiments, warning all of us about a new direction in U.S. policy and military medicine--a direction that not so long ago was unthinkable.

Click here for more information about Oath Betrayed: America's Torture Doctors, Second Edition

Read More...

The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is the second book I've read on the anthrax attack. The first, The Killer Strain: Anthrax and a Government Exposed (2003) by Washington Post journalist Marilyn W. Thompson is a good book (with a different emphasis), but this is a better one. Written by Rutgers University Professor Leonard A. Cole, who is an expert on bioterrorism, The Anthrax Letters is both more extensive and goes into greater depth than Thompson's book.
Perhaps the most important thing (from my point of view) that Professor Cole does is argue convincingly against the FBI's disaffected loner theory of who did it. Instead Cole presents a lot of evidence that strongly suggests that Al Qaeda may indeed have been responsible.
First of all, the leading suspect, Attorney General John Ashcroft's "person of interest," Steven Hatfill, actually had an alibi. He was working in another state at the time some of the letters were mailed in Trenton, New Jersey. More importantly though, Cole sees a link between Iraq's known bioweapons program and Al Qaeda; he believes that the Ames anthrax strain in the Daschle letter was possibly purified and concentrated by "the Iraqi BW team." (p. 201)
Furthermore the fact that there were at least two types of "weapons" sent by mail suggests more than a lone perpetrator. Additionally, the mystery of why the tabloid people in Florida were targeted (and indeed how they became targets) is explained when one learns that two of the suspected 9/11 hijackers rented an apartment from Gloria Irish, the wife of Mike Irish, editor of the Sun tabloid, an American Media Inc. publication. One of the men, Marwan Akl-Shehhi, told her that he was a pilot and was taking flying lessons. (p. 42) And it is not to be forgotten that the Al Qaeda suspects were interested in learning to fly crop dusters. That alone makes it clear that they expected to have access to and intended to use either chemical or biological weapons. Finally, there is the unsettling fact that one of the hijackers was actually treated for a black lesion on his leg that could very well have been cutaneous anthrax.
Cole also suggests that it was no coincidence that the anthrax attacks began less than a month after September 11, 2001.
To all of this I would add the fact that the Bush administration has become entirely mute on this question, which may suggest that they know who did it but for reasons unknown to us are not telling. What could those reasons be? Originally I thought it was because the FBI had bungled the evidence and didn't have enough left to stand up in court, or that something about the perp or information he or she had would be embarrassing to the government. Now I think it is possible that Al Qaeda was indeed responsible but the Bush administration won't acknowledge that because it would have to reveal secret information about our counter-terrorism program, and also possibly because such information may work into the hands of Al Qaeda's desire to psychologically terrorize the US population.
Another interesting point that Cole brings up is the question of exactly how many cases of anthrax illness were caused by the mailed spores. He reports that there were eleven confirmed cases with five deaths. However, as noted in the final chapter, there is a twelfth case that the CDC would not confirm, that of postal inspector William Paliscak who had inhaled dust in which there were spores, and who had anthrax spores on his clothing and in his car. The problem is that the CDC was not able to culture anthrax from blood samples taken from Paliscak. Cole speculates that Paliscak and possibly others at the Brentwood postal facility did indeed contract anthrax, asking, "Could bacilli have been embedded in the brains of Bill Paliscak and others who were exposed to spores...?" He adds that there were eight deaths at Brentwood in the year following the anthrax attack when usually there are only two a year. Four of the people who died had inexplicably enlarged hearts. (p. 237)
Also significant is Cole's point that what we learned from the attacks is that we are not nearly as well prepared as we thought, and that the use of the postal service as a means of disseminating a bioterrorist weapon was greatly underrated. What was not realized prior to these attacks was that anthrax spores in the size of about three microns would easily slip through the 20-micron pores in a typical envelope resulting in cross-contamination of the mail. The two women, Kathy Nguyen and Ottilie Lundgren, who died of inhalation anthrax even though spores were never found in their homes or in their mailboxes, were probably the victims of cross-contamination. Cole posits that by the time the mailboxes were swabbed the spores had dissipated. In support of this idea Cole quotes Harvard microbiologist Matthew Meselson as saying, "a single organism [of anthrax] has a chance of initiating infection." (p.110)
This raises the question of how many other people died because of their exposure to the bacterium, cases that were either not reported or unrecognized as anthrax killings.
This leaves me with an idea. Cole reports that how the perps got the very, very fine and slippery weapons-grade anthrax spores into the envelops without getting some into the air and eventually into their lungs is not known. With Al Qaeda's complete disregard for human life, they may not have warned their operatives of the dangers. Perhaps the FBI ought to look for some dead Al Qaeda operatives in the US and double-check the cause of death.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story

Get 29% OFF

Click here for more information about The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story

Read More...