Please Sign PHR Complaint to OHRP on CIA Unethical Research and Experimentation

Reprinted from Op-Ed News, the article below was written by Stephen Soldz, a psychologist, and one of the authors of the report cited in the article.

Coalition Files Office of Human Research Protections Complaint: Investigate CIA Research
by Stephen Soldz

On Monday, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) released a new report "Experiments in Torture: Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the "Enhanced" Interrogation Program," which provides evidence indicating that the "enhanced interrogation" program carried out after September 11, 2001 involved doctors and other health professionals in conducting apparently unethical research and experimentation using detainees as human subjects. Two PsySR members, Steven Reisner and myself, are among the coauthors on this report.

The report received extensive press coverage, including over 500 articles. It was downloaded 4,200 times in the first 24 hours. Among the press articles was this New York Times article and one I wrote [readable here]. Last Tuesday also saw a New York Times editorial on the report.

As a follow-up action, on Wednesday eight health, religious, human rights groups PHR, PsySR, Amnesty, Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Center for Victims of Torture, National Religious Campaign Against Torture [the International Rehabilitation Council for the Victims of Torture joined the next day] held a press conference announcing that we are filing a complaint with the Office of Human Research Protection (OHRP) in the Department of Health and Human Services. OHRP is the federal office tasked with enforcing The Common Rule, the set of research ethics guidelines that all responsible human subject researchers learn early in their training. I've posted below the statement that I made at the press conference on behalf of PsySR.

One exciting aspect of this OHRP complaint is that, for the first time it provides a mechanism for individual citizens to directly take action regarding an aspect of our government's torture regime. PHR has established an online mechanism whereby each of us can directly sign onto the complaint to OHRP. PLEASE CONSIDER GOING HERE AND SIGNING THE COMPLAINT. We hope that many thousands around the world will join us in this complaint.

Please do what you can to spread the word. We are especially interested in mobilizing new constituencies: the scientific community because of the illegal and unethical research angle; the Jewish community because of the Nazi doctors connection; and the African-American community because of the Tuskegee connection. Please help with forwarding articles, writing letters to the editor, calling in to talk radio, posting comments on online articles, etc, etc.

Experiments in Torture and news about the report and its reception are available here.

To read Dr. Soldz's own comments upon filing the OHRP complaint, please click through here.