The big conundrum with the Nuremberg Doctrine is that it banned the use of data obtained in Nazi concentration camp experiments entirely.  It is well known that the majority of so called scientific research in the camps was of no scientific value whatsoever and was the product of fantasist race theory but some was of obvious use.

The US and Soviet space programmes relied heavily not only on Nazi rocket engineers but on some of the medical experiments carried out on unwilling prisoners. The rationale behind the Nuremberg Doctrine was that to use this data would in someway justify the appalling brutality that was used to obtain it.

Returning to torture and the involvement of medics there is no justification for torture at all and no exception to the international law that the US and the Allies imposed on the World in 1945.  Torture is not even efficient and many people give information under torture that is false simply to make the pain stop.  Many tortured actually do not know anything anyway.  

In the GDR sleep deprivation was the most common form of what is euphemistically described as EIT.  The victim was sat in a chair facing an interrogator and kept awake for many hours under constant interrogation.  The interrogators changed shifts but the interrogation continued until the victim gave the information the Stasi wanted.  Incidentally it did not need to be true, only what they wanted to hear which was usually the denouncing of others.

No one was able to resist for long and this technique can't be beaten by training.  The problem with it is that many victims were so disorientated and confused by the lack of sleep that their answers were useless in terms of information of real value.  Any psychiatrist or clinical psychologist could have told the torturers that.

The psychiatrists, psychologists and other medics involved in torture or EIT or whatever other euphemism is used for brutality are not only condoning it but facilitating it.  Those doctors are themselves torturers and there is no convenient excuse for it.  

The Nazi doctors at Auschwitz and other facilities in the 3rd Reich believed what they were doing was for the good of humanity too.  The KGB and the MfS believed that they were protecting socialism for the good of mankind.  Its always easy to find an excuse but impossible to justify one.

Dear Barry, how can' t we agree with the spirit of your question? The problem, however, is that those doctors work for the government, and so in practice the principium non nocere does not work for them. It is very much like those people -scientists, f.i.- who work for large corporations.

We seem to live in a kind of schizo world.

At the Nuremberg's trial, those accused of atrocities used as their first line of defense:  ''I obeyed orders''.  Is it acceptable as an argument.  Could all the civil servants , soldiers justified in blindly following orders?   Sparta was renown in all of Greece for the examplary devotion of its free citizens.  But it was not a devotion to authorities.  In the middle of a battle if the general was ordering the soldiers to do something that did not make any senses, it was common and well accepted that one other soldier would in those case take the control of the army which would spontaneously follow what make sense instead of authority.  So civil disobedience in the case where obedience would be against common good is the only way to go.  

The institution of a realm of law with a minimal separation from the real of powers at the international level is not yet establish.  The Nuremberg's trial was a tribunal of the victorious state and the US never accepted that its civil servant and soldier could be submitted to an international tribunal for the protection of the human rights at the international level.  They never accepted in order to ensure total obedience to its orders.  As long as the biggest military, economic and political power will not submit to the principle of international justice then international justice will not be.

That was indeed the case: every one was obeying - and hence, following the laws and the Constitution. Isn' t that perverse?

Those doctors are literal cases of people that sold their should… to Dr. Faustus (sic!).

Dear Barry,

I admire all your RG questions for their depth and universality.  But I would take exception to the wording of your present question.  Doctrines by definition cannot fail. They do not live, but have being outside time in a realm of archetypes.  It is people who fail.  George W. Bush failed.  Dick Cheney failed. The medical doctors who engaged in enhanced interrogation failed. Yes they should be stripped of their medical licenses for non-compliance with the Hippocratic Oath.  But seriously, in the U.S., lately a nation of cynics-- a majority approves the enhanced interrogation techniques--, who is going to remove those licenses?

I guess the answer lies in the question of whether interrogation techniques would have been abandoned if doctors refused to be involved?

In my opinion; it is a matter of striking a balance between conflicting compelling interests.

And I would like to add that your very interesting question begs another question: Should doctors involved in the execution of the death penalty be disbarred from medical practice?

The gap between what is written in the law and what happens in real life does happen all the time; otherwise our society would really be an ideal one where everyone follows the law :-) No, our world is an actual world, not a dream one, and there are always those who are intent in breaking the law. The problem is not that there is the gap -- it will always be there -- but how to deal with it once it happens. That is, how should we as the world community deal with the problem when it is known. Sometimes this requires strong political will, but perhaps more importantly it requires the awareness and the realization that this cannot be tolerated and needs to be condemned.

Nelson

I agree that it is people not doctrines that fail but doctrines can of course be false in the first instance and the Nuremberg Doctrine was flawed from the outset.  As Louis says above the Nuremberg Trials were victor's justice and however much the perpetrators of war crimes deserved their fate reconciling the trials with the rule of law is entirely another matter.  

Right from the end of WW2 data from Nazi medical experiments was used by the US, the UK and the Soviet Union in developing new weapons especially nerve gasses and high altitude aircraft.  This was in spite of the ruling at the so called 'Doctors Trials' that such data could never be used.  

I guess what I was asking in the question was can we abandon morality when it suits us and take it up again later?  In an earlier question I asked if the rules of war perpetuate it.  Should we simply stop pretending there are any? 

The big conundrum with the Nuremberg Doctrine is that it banned the use of data obtained in Nazi concentration camp experiments entirely.  It is well known that the majority of so called scientific research in the camps was of no scientific value whatsoever and was the product of fantasist race theory but some was of obvious use.

The US and Soviet space programmes relied heavily not only on Nazi rocket engineers but on some of the medical experiments carried out on unwilling prisoners. The rationale behind the Nuremberg Doctrine was that to use this data would in someway justify the appalling brutality that was used to obtain it.

Returning to torture and the involvement of medics there is no justification for torture at all and no exception to the international law that the US and the Allies imposed on the World in 1945.  Torture is not even efficient and many people give information under torture that is false simply to make the pain stop.  Many tortured actually do not know anything anyway.  

In the GDR sleep deprivation was the most common form of what is euphemistically described as EIT.  The victim was sat in a chair facing an interrogator and kept awake for many hours under constant interrogation.  The interrogators changed shifts but the interrogation continued until the victim gave the information the Stasi wanted.  Incidentally it did not need to be true, only what they wanted to hear which was usually the denouncing of others.

No one was able to resist for long and this technique can't be beaten by training.  The problem with it is that many victims were so disorientated and confused by the lack of sleep that their answers were useless in terms of information of real value.  Any psychiatrist or clinical psychologist could have told the torturers that.

The psychiatrists, psychologists and other medics involved in torture or EIT or whatever other euphemism is used for brutality are not only condoning it but facilitating it.  Those doctors are themselves torturers and there is no convenient excuse for it.  

The Nazi doctors at Auschwitz and other facilities in the 3rd Reich believed what they were doing was for the good of humanity too.  The KGB and the MfS believed that they were protecting socialism for the good of mankind.  Its always easy to find an excuse but impossible to justify one.

Dear Barry, pushing your fen argument a bit further, let's please not forget the very recent documents about torture under the Bush administration, and even at the beginnings of the Obama administrations… Hence...

Filippo

I agree with you.  I have heard the point made in rather chilling language, that we should concern ourselves with needs of the living rather than sentiments for the dead.

Many of the judgements at Nuremberg were faulty and some of the Nazi medical experimentation and research was sound.  They made the link between smoking and lung cancer well before anyone else and that knowledge was suppressed to the obvious delight of the tobacco companies.

Medical ethics are rather uncompromising and legal judgements even more so. It is odd that scientific data from other medical experiments, some of which were equally unethical is used when this drew blanket prohibition.  

In any case as we well known that the prohibition was ignored for convenience and it seems the other prohibitions, that also arose from the Judgements at Nuremberg are now equally valueless in the interpretation of some.  

In Canada and I guess that in many country, in a criminal investigation if some evidences incriminating a person are gathered in an unlawfull way these evidences, even if they are clear evidences that the person is guilty,  cannot be bring in front of the court.  Why?  The utililitarian mentality pervading the modern era is not applied here?  Because the long term effects of accepting this practice would undermine the principle of justice.  What is more important is not this investigation and justice in this single case but the principle of justice for the million of cases that are coming.  If this principle of justice has to be upheld against short miopic single case utilitarian view for ordinary criminal case then it should be upheld for the case of torture even more.  Simply asking if it was usefull or if it could be usefull is undermining the principle of justice. 

"They enjoyed the work they were trained for and chose not because they needed to but because they wanted to and there is nothing wrong with that because to enjoy life we have to do hedonistically what we want to do and never what we "have" to do, It is a freedom thing".

An interesting philosophy, presumable the same sentiment applies to the vermin that murdered over 140 children in a school or the low down trash that crashed planes into the WTC.

As for getting behind the troops, when was the  last time the US Government did that?  Unless of course what you mean by "getting behind them" is getting a long way behind them

Barry,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_principles

A lot of these principles are based on establishing a primacy of international justice over national justice.  But any justice system has to be embodied and act upon to really exist outside the piece of papers onto which they are written.  So if a country decided to agree on the principle of supremacy on international justice then that country has to trial the criminal on its territory even if the criminal is not a citizen of that country.  In this way the war criminals could not travel in these country and the more there will be of these country and the more they will have to do like criminals, hide.  But the main benefice will not be the punishments to the criminals but the signal send to everybody that impunity is not universal and they should think twice before breaking international laws even they are ordered to do so.

All these discussions about the human right, torture, principle of law, big brother and privacy, fight agains terrorism, etc, are on the rise because of the rise of a global  polititco-economic totalitarian order.

''Totalitarianism is always a project of absolute control of every single aspect of a person’s existence, from cradle to grave and beyond. It is antithetical to privacy, because even a person’s most intimate actions, thoughts and desires must become totally transparent to those in control. If one does not voluntarily submit to these intrusions, then one is shamed and, if necessary, coerced. If one does not voluntarily confess one’s crimes, then one is threatened and sometimes isolated or tortured. Totalitarian systems assume that everyone has something to hide and therefore to confess, and yet these systems are themselves highly secretive. While requiring total transparency from those they control, they demand total opacity for their own conduct.''

Louis

I agree that the Nuremberg principles were to establish a concept of international justice along with a kind of international cooperation that would make future wars less likely.  This hugely optimistic vision was of course soon subsumed into the reality of the Cold War and a future of peace, justice and human rights never fully got off the ground.

It was ironically largely the threat of total annihilation that prevented a major war for over 50 years but the nations of the world did not in the main embrace peace, simply war by proxy.  Your observations on totalitarianism are absolutely correct.  These are societies governed by abject paranoia and obsessional searches for hidden enemies.  If there are no actual enemies then they will invent some.  Enemies are needed to justify vast spending on weapons and secret police forces to counter the 'threat'

I spent some time in one of these absurd states.  In the former GDR huge numbers of secret police with the assistance of even huger numbers of Innofizielle Mitarbeiter spied on the population and each other obsessively and looked for negative/destructive influences within the state.  The country was famously surrounded by an anti-fascist protection barrier which curiously was quite pervious to 'fascists' if not for citizens of the state.   

The GDR, like all of its Warsaw Pact Allies collapsed when the Soviet Union refused to bankroll it and underpin its 'security'.  The vast sums spent on 'protecting' the state and the huge suffering inflicted on its population were in vain.  

International law is still largely a fantasy.  Russia/Ukraine, ISIS, International banking fraud, The Taliban, terrorists the world over and corrupt governments make it very much pie in the sky.  

Graham

I do not 'express' that we (the democratic world that is) are different from others, only that we profess to be.  That is the point.  I am fully aware, thanks to life experience rather than education that even the highly educated are capable of bestial behaviour.  If I ever had any illusions about the divine spark of humanity I lost it so long ago that I can't remember when.

If the free world really exists, if we are morally superior to those who behead innocent people in the name of ideology, if we operate by the rule of law and not the rule of the brutal despot and if we really want the rest of the world to act in a fair, decent and humanitarian way we cannot do as they (our ideological enemies) do.  A six year old child is capable of recognising hypocrisy and teaching by bad example is not the way to go.

I understand your cynicism and even your use of metaphor, elaborate as it is.   I am lawyer so I have no conscience or soul.  I am also a scientist working in the most corrupt and deceitful realm of it known to man.  All illusions about humanity disappeared somewhere in that confused history. 

Thanks for the advice on breathing exercises but I am way past that route to salvation.

can people tortured by the CIA now sue the US?

http://theconversation.com/explainer-can-people-tortured-by-the-cia-now-sue-the-us-35342

Superior orders

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

Before suing in 'world courts' its a good idea to check two things:

• Who bankrolls them?
• Who cares what they decide?

The UK got sued in the ECtHR (European Court of Human Rights) on many occasions for torturing people who were its own citizens (well! they were terrorists)  in the 1970's.  The UK government ignored the rulings.  

Sorry, I did not mean torturing, The UK does not do that... it was Enhanced Interrogation.

Graham,

It can also be US court:

''Torture is a crime but it is arguably also a tort. That means victims can sue for damages in civil courts – subject to any US laws that might prohibit suit against the US government and its agencies. In this scenario, the defendants would be the US government, the CIA itself and possibly individual officers.

The relevant US courts will need to be persuaded that they have jurisdiction over the acts committed by US agencies and personnel overseas and be prepared to apply laws extra-territorially. Universal jurisdiction may assist under the Torture Convention.

There is precedent for prosecuting acts of torture committed by serving army personnel in the English courts:''

http://theconversation.com/explainer-can-people-tortured-by-the-cia-now-sue-the-us-35342

It is "unrealistic" to think that slavery has been abolished & then vanished. Every day you will see persons carrying out obvious wrong deeds & the justification is ready "I was obeying the orders of my superiors". How come humanity will progress when this cowardice prevails? Why do not we call the spade a spade? Intellectuals ought to be brave enough to fight against social & political illnesses. The universities ought to produce free men & women and not just other batches of slaves. Of course, one will be punished by the "dictators" but what will be the alternative? It will be more authoritarian masters who will turn us, the humans, into herds of sheep.  

Barry,

I never viewed the Nuremberg Doctrine as an assertion of political superiority of the conqueror over the vanquished. I happen to know the family of Sen. Thomas Dodd (Dem., CT),, instrumental in getting the Nuremberg trials started.  Public statements as well as statements in private to his intimates seem to indicate that his idealism was genuine.  To assert otherwise, I feel, is cynical. Perhaps I err.

I'm of the opinion that by treating prisoners in a humane manner, much better quality information can be extracted. As an example, everybody gets the same living quaters, well prepared meals (subject to religious or dietary requirements), and the ones who give you something special in terms of information, gets rewarded with desert. coffee, longer walks. a fishing trip etc. One can achieve a pnenominal amount by rudimentary kindness and rewarding good performance with something really special for that person.

I'd like to point out here that he/she is a PERSON. Treat him like one and you will achieve wonders,

Nelson

Those who set up the trials were not cynical, they believed in the rule of law as a counterpoint to the Nazi's flagrant perversion of it.

The idealism was morally sound if a bit naive.  The cynicism of others set in later. 

Nelson,

You are confusing a whole bunch of things. 

First, the morality of torture is what it is. It has nothing to do with medical ethics. If torture is wrong in a given instance, or in all instances, it is wrong. Period.

Second, the Hippocratic Oath has nothing to do with anything. The H.O. is about the doctor/patient relationship. Read it. And it says nothing about first doing no harm. Which is no longer part of medical ethics in an era of treatments that do harm-- it has been replaced by a requirement to maximize the benefit/risk ratio, and to assure that the patient understands the risks and benefits of proposed treatment. The relationship of a torturer to a person who is being tortured is not that of doctor to patient.

Third, the H.O. is not the basis for licensure in any American jurisdiction. Furthermore, rightly or wrongly, it is doubtful that a doctor could lose his or her medical license for doing something he reasonably believed to be legal, and participating in a federal program . In a country with the rule of law, we remove licenses for disobeying laws, not for acitons that don't comply with someone's concept of morality.

Fourth, enhanced interrogation is, and has been a bipartisan practice, as well as other practices (such as extrajudicial assassination of American citizens) that arguably violate both domestic law and international laws.  

Finally, EIT is by no means a unique American practice, and likely is the rule rather than the exception in law enforcement throughout the world.

In the US, you will find doctors who oppose EIT, other doctors who support it in principle, and still others who are willing to get involved in the practice. The moral arguments against it are different from the empirical arguments against it;  some in this thread have argued that it is ineffective, but would they support its use if it demonstrably was effective? Assuming it is effective, there are problems with defining what the line is between permissible and impermissible techniques-- how much duress is too much? What kind of threats are impermissible? How many hors of consecturive questioning? Etc. What sorts of controls should be placed in interrogation?

All of these are political and legal questions, and not questions of medical ethics. 

Allan

You make some very strong points here. I am afraid I have to disagree with you on the Primum non Nocere doctrine which is still a fundamental pillar or principalist medical ethics now more commonly referred to as non-maleficence.

There is quite some difference between giving a patient a treatment which causes some 'harm' in the physical sense, as in adverse reactions to drugs and other treatments and deliberately inflicting harm in an interrogation. In the first instance, as you rightly suggest it is a matter of risk/benefit and the welfare of the patient is paramount.

Using EIT has no benefit for the victim and has a very patchy at best success rate in obtaining information. Everyone knows that in the 'war on terror' that most of the serviceable info comes from informants either paid or planted. That is far more effective in quality, reliability and in that it undermines our enemys' sense of security and righteousness. Their own are prepared to betray them!

Most of the information obtained by the defunct Ministerium für Staatssicherheit came not from the tortured but from the inoffizielle mitarbeiter, a paid or enthusiastic informant.

I agree entirely that the use of EIT is a political or legal question as was the implementation of the Nuremberg Doctrine.  I guess what I am asking is can we ignore our own rule of law and moralise about others who never subscribed to it in the first place?

Even a decade ago it would not even be acceptable to discuss in public if torture could be beneficial or not.  Today, it is causually discuss.  Which is a testimony of the state of the moral fiber of our societies.  As soon as we do not feel ashame of even discussing the possibility of a benefic then we are already on the steep slope of moral bankrupsy of the modern psyche where the dignity of humanity is attacked on all sides.

We don't disagree with the application of the doctrine of primum non nocere. And I'm quite familiar with principalist medical ethics; I've spent most of  the afternoon reading page proofs on one article based in part on the 4 principles, and I did some writing on another article. However, non-maleficence now is (or should be) weighed against beneficence and other considerations to make risk/benefit the reigning paradigm. We hurt patients every time we give an injection or do surgery. When Hippocrates (or someone else) wrote the adage, the possibilities for positive influence of treatment were severely limited, and the adage made sense standing on its own legs. It is not a part of the Hippocratic Oath, by the way, though it is contained in writings attributed to Hippocrates. And most medical students no longer take the Hippocratic Oath, which (among other things) requires physicians to abstain from surgery and termination of pregnancy, and to teach other doctors' children gratis, at least the children of one's own teachers. Furthermore, even those of us who are theistic generally prefer not to take oaths to Greek gods.  

As for the hypocrisy of  criticism of torture by folks practicing torture, La Rochefoucault famously said that it was "the compliment vice pays to virtue." Better to have standards and break them than not to have them. 

The point of torture in societies such as East Germany was not so much to get information as to terrorize , or terrorise, as you would say :-), the population. I recommend the film Barbara (2012, directed by Christian Petzold)  as a wisely portrayed window into the mindset of East German society. It is not moralistic-- the victim was not motivated by principle-- and there is no actual torture or even EIT. But it shows how that sort of government could use 90% positive reinforcement and 10% negative reinforcement to maintain control. 

I am fascinated by the concept that it is "better to have standards and break them rather than not to have them".  This provides the ultimate excuse and licence to abandon standards when it suits and to pick them up again when that suits better.  In other words the standards are a fashion not an obligation.  

The Nuremberg Doctrine was not a set of standards adopted but a set imposed.  The prohibitions were absolute and people were retrospectively judged and executed based on such standards.  It was not an excuse at Nuremberg to say "I was only obeying orders" and I am unsure if any of the defendants ever suggested that they had only 'temporarily abandoned their standards' but were now quite willing to take them up again.

The Nuremberg Doctrine was forced upon the world by the victorious allies, it was not optional.  The allies created a whole new corpus juris based on a curious mixture of human rights, retrospective criminality, retribution and coercion.   

During the 1980's I had several of my own windows into the society in the DDR, I was there when it fell apart and fulfilled a life time ambition to climb over that wall  (albeit when the risk of getting shot was very much attenuated)   The government of the GDR certainly believed in the adage of having standards that could be suspended to suit convenience.  They frequently acted in a way that violated their own constitution and torture and coercion were not confined to interrogations in Hohenschönhausen and hard labour in Bautzen.  

My memories are largely of stifling statism, vast numbers of uniforms, being 'given orders' and subject to restrictions by hotel reception staff, being followed by absurd spooks in leather jackets and very cheap high quality beer. I was lucky though, I could always leave if it got too oppressive. 

I doubt that weighing the beneficence of that 'socialist and humanistic paradise' with its 'full employment' and 'cradle to grave social services' against its obvious maleficence of the vicious police state mentality and inherent corruption would work.  

We should be careful of being too comfortable with the cosy idea that we can break standards so long as we have them to return to later.  Like the sittings of the Volkskammer of the DDR we might find they are suspended rather more often than they are active.  

Barry,

There is a fine line between having standards and observing them imperfectly and not having standards at all. 

Allan

You are quite right.  I am however talking about imposing sets of values on others by which they are judged while the judges themselves abandon those values at leisure.

The allies sat in judgement on the Nazis for perpetrating some of the most hideous acts in human history and out of that judgement came declarations of human rights and prohibitions on those very behaviours that were judged crimes against humanity.

The allies (I can presume to say 'we' because the same countries today sit in the same judgements as then) categorically condemned medical professionals who took part in torture or inhuman experiments.  'We' banned torture without caveats on 'when it might be effective'  'We' applied the same 'rule of law' against murderers and torturers in the former Yugoslavia.  We justify our actions in our 'national interest' while condemning identical actions by other nations in theirs.

This is not about holier than thou morality.  It is not about hypocrisy.  Why should any tinpot dictator or sociopathic demagogue watching us in our behaviour take 'us' seriously?  After all they can always do just as we do, adopt a set of values that can be switched on and off as convenience suits.  

What is the actual difference between imperfect observation of standards and not actually having them?  Are standards temporarily abandoned anymore effective than standards utterly absent? 

OOOH another wonderful sharing of close yet divergent ideas.  The one thing we know about the development of morality is that there is a vast difference between moral behavior and moral reasoning.  So in the abstract I may believe that all murder and all torture is wrong( and I do believe that) and is wrong in all cultures and in all societies, but that doesn't mean I am always going to live up to my own moral reasoning.  Think back to when you were 7 or 8.  What made things morally wrong?  If you were like most of us, it was whether or not you got caught, whether you were punished or rewarded for your behavior, who was the actor and who was the recipient in any moral scenario.  I get pissed every year when we get to this point because if you hold strictly to Kohlberg's Theory of moral development, women will never rise to the level of moral reasoning than men.  Why, because women are more relationship oriented at least in part because of socialization and so events and actions that injure our families may have a very different perception of morality than if it is YOUR family.  I think I just went through a version of this in discussing the Taliban and the Irish Revolution.  

And I disagree that we do not condemn or accept medical actions because of differences in moral perception and reasoning.  I don't have the slightest problem in allowing women to make childbearing choices with only their physician and their conscience.  I think it is immoral for men to be allowed to dictate the legal rights of reproduction of women when they are not even willing to financially keep their own biological offspring in food, education, clothing.  And for that matter, if the woman doesn't want to give birth JUST BECAUSE, it interfere's with her choice for education, career, social interactions...then so be it because it is her body, her rights and I think as an adult woman, she has a greater authority over her life than anyone else.  BUT Lord help me, the pendulum has swung so far back some little old white men who cheat on their wives, encourage their girl friends to have abortions and pass laws disallowing government sponsored child care, government sponsored aid to dependent families and government sponsored education to name only a few.  And while they are at it...they yell and scream, make women who are making difficult choices in this area watch a live action ultrasound all while being lectured to about GOD and the BIBLE.  I mean seriously, don't make me puke.  Where is this divine being who allows millions of people, children and all get killed in sunami, earthquakes.  Where is all the crying about the fate of the innocent then?  And I mght add, a few truly disturbed ones of this ilk think it is ok to murder a Doctor in his Church in front of his family, his congregation, his children because he took pity on women who were pregnant with horribly distorted fetuses.  Morality seems to me to be a lot easier, a lot less personal when you are just accepting the avoidance of the wrath of a vengeful God.  

I really have to work at it, and it isn't always consistent.  My lord, sometimes I even have to admit I am wrong.  

Now at the same time, not all physicians act out of a universal truth.  Remember Michael Jackson?  He died as the direct malfeasance of a physician who basically was so lazy and so greedy that he used an otherwise medically allowable drug...propofol in too large and two frequent a dose.  So Michael Jackson died.  And his children are without a father.   Maybe he isn't guilty of first degree murder, but he certainly is guilty of more than just malpractice.  And he deserves to pay a price for putting his wants above his role as a physician.  

And what about the Policeman who kills an unarmed person out of unconscious racism.  It doesn't make that person less dead.  So moral development and behaviors to me are not black and white.  Not simple.  It is the accumulation of effects on the lives of others that may dictate the type and the extent of the consequences.

Oh woe is me.  I think it would be easier to be my Golden Retriever.

Modern states by their very nature are complex and ride on the wheels of institutions. Given their complexity--competing and conflicting demands of their most vociferous stakeholders--it mobilise and deploy resources, time and talent to meet the demands with firm focus on short time horizon, or, at most on intermediate time horizon. Suffice it to say that such institutions and agencies are firmly controlled by egomaniacs with a touch of psychopathy.

When the U.S. championed the Nuremberg doctrine, it was affirming its hegemony and sphere of influence on the world stage. Further, history belongs to victors; and it made most of it by thoroughly discrediting the antics and the war efforts of Germany and its co-travellers for their lack of humanity and moral and ethical grounding. That was a powerful narrative that presaged a new world that was sculptured in the very image of the U.S.

Fast-forward a few years later, the U.S. got itself in a pickle in Vietnam; it revisited all its previous sanctimonious undertakings. Its previous affirmation and commitment to ethical principles were not enough to constrain it from unleashing napalm on Vietnamese army and civilians. Enough.

My point being: modern states and their institutions have at their apex men and women with streak of psychopathy.  As a result, these characters by their nature, seek parochial interests, with intense inclination to live in the moment which inform their policies and decisions. The doctors in question are professionally accountable to a regulatory body which hardly operates in a vacuum. I’m not for a moment holding brief for them, but they are small fries, all things considered. One wonders what the unsuspecting public will make of the two psychologists that the U.S. government invested $81 million to research, design and manualise dehumanising physical and psychological conditioning that inform the torture techniques and extraordinary rendition, the very ‘Intel chip’ on which the behemoth, Guantanamo Bay operates.

If we want to know what is dangerous for democracy , the best method is to listen to those that are partisan of dictatorship.  One such person is the Carl Schmitt who was a nazi until his death in 1985.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt

In 1921 , he wrote a book: On Dictatorship.

"If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship."

For Schmitt, every government capable of decisive action must include a dictatorial element within its constitution. Although the German concept of Ausnahmezustand is best translated as "state of emergency", it literally means state of exception which, according to Schmitt, frees the executive from any legal restraints to its power that would normally apply. The use of the term "exceptional" has to be underlined here: Schmitt defines sovereignty as the power to decide the instauration of state of exception, as Giorgio Agamben has noted. According to Agamben,[20] Schmitt's conceptualization of the "state of exception" as belonging to the core-concept of sovereignty was a response to Walter Benjamin's concept of a "pure" or "revolutionary" violence, which did not enter into any relationship whatsoever with right. Through the state of exception, Schmitt included all types of violence under right, in the case of the authority of Hitler leading to the formulation "The leader defends the law" ("Der Führer schützt das Recht").[16]

Schmitt opposed what he called "commissarial dictatorship", or the declaration of a state of emergency in order to save the legal order (a temporary suspension of law, defined itself by moral or legal right): the state of emergency is limited (even if a posteriori, by law) to "sovereign dictatorship", in which law was suspended, as in the classical state of exception, not to "save the Constitution", but rather to create another Constitution. This is how he theorized Hitler's continual suspension of the legal constitutional order during the Third Reich (the Weimar Republic's Constitution was never abrogated, underlined Giorgio Agamben;[21] rather, it was "suspended" for four years, first with the 28 February 1933 Reichstag Fire Decree, with the suspension renewed every four years, implying a continual state of emergency).

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Some have argued that neoconservativism has been influenced by Schmitt.[34] Most notably the legal opinions offered by Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo et al. by invoking the unitary executive theory to justify highly controversial policies in the war on terror—such as introducing unlawful combatant status which purportedly would eliminate protection by the Geneva Conventions,[35] enhanced interrogation techniques, NSA electronic surveillance program—mimic his writings.[34] Professor David Luban had indicated that "[a] Lexis search reveals five law review references to Schmitt between 1980 and 1990; 114 between 1990 and 2000; and 420 since 2000, with almost twice as many in the last five years as the previous five".[

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The only difference between Schmitt and today's public advocate of the right of the state ot step out of the law for case of exception is the systemic elimination of the words such as dictatorship as used by Schmitt.  The Schmitt of today are not so honest in their language.  

I personally feel that there is more to the techniques of interrogation than mere aberration of medical ethics.

There is no argument in support of any state to permit torture as a bonafide method of investigation. Yet, it finds expression in the investigative process on account of the cultural construct that we use to define the suspect. For example, a penniless beggar picked up by the police for drunkenness is more likely to be physically assaulted in custody than a millionaire drunk picked up for rash driving. While the former will be labelled a 'scum', the later will be assisted in contacting his lawyer. 

The Nuremberg Doctrine is not a failure. Even in its own days, it was criticized as 'Victor's Justice'. There are always two ways of looking at things. At that point of time Nuremberg looked at Nazis as perpetrators of barbarism. Today we are looking at terrorists as barbaric. It is a cultural construction.

In Book I Tocqueville draws attention to the history of the Parlements, those aristocratic assemblies which in 1788 initiated the attack on the old regime. The title of the fourth chapter reads: “How, Just When They Thought Themselves Masters of the Nation, the Parlements Suddenly Discovered That They Amounted to Nothing.” Perhaps the most brilliant completed portion of the second volume of the Old Regime is Book III, France before the Consulate. “How the Republic Was Ready to Accept a Master.” “How the Nation, Though Ceasing to Be Republican, Remained Revolutionary.”

Tockequeville: ''Between fear of the royalists and of the Jacobins, the majority of the nation sought an escape. The Revolution was dear, but the Republic was feared lest it should result in the return of one or the other. One might even say that each of these passions nourished the other; it was because the French found precious certain benefits ensured them by the Revolution that they feared all the more keenly a government which might interfere with these profits. Of all the privileges that they had won or obtained during the previous ten years, the only one that they were disposed to surrender was liberty. They were ready to give up the liberty which the Revolution had merely promised, in order to finally enjoy the benefits that it had brought.

The parties themselves, decimated, apathetic, and weary, longed to rest for a time during a dictatorship of any kind, provided only that it was exercised by an outsider and that it weighed upon their rivals as much as on themselves. This feature completes the picture. When great political parties begin to cool in their attachments without softening their hatreds, and at last reach the point of wishing less to succeed than to prevent the success of their opponents, one should prepare for servitude—the master is near.

It was easy to see that this master could rise only from the army…''

From: Alexis de Tocqueville: A Bibliographical Essay by John Lukacs

http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/alexis-de-tocqueville-a-bibliographical-essay-by-john-lukacs

Jacques Ellul, The Betrayal by Technology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdogID589Mk

QUOTES:

Just consider for example, that atrocious exuse. It was one of the most horrible things I have ever heard. The person in charge of the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen was asked, during the Auschwitz trial the Nuremburg trials regarding Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen: But didn’t you find it horrible? All those corpses? He replied: What could I do? The capacity of the ovens was too small. I couldn’t process all those corpses. It caused me many problems. I had no time to think about those people. I was too busy with that technical problem of my ovens. That was the classic example of an irresponsible person. He carries out his technical task and he’s not interested in anything else. (part 1.)

The question now is whether people are prepared or not to realize that they are dominated by technology. And to relize that technology oppresses them forces them to undertake certain obligations and conditions them. Their freedom begins when they become conscious of these things. For when we become conscious of that which determines our life we atteain the highest degree of freedom. I must make sure that I can analyse it just as I can analyse a stone or any other object that I can analyse it and fathom it from all angles. As soon as I can break down this whole technological system into its smallest components my freedom begins. But I also know that, at the same time, I’m dominated by technology. So I don’t say: I’m so strong that technology has no hold on me. Of course technology has a hold on me. I know that very well. (Part 5)

… as soon as the moment arrives when I think that the situation is really dangerous I can’t make do any more with purely technological means. Then I must employ all my human and intellectual capacities and all my relationships with others to create a counterbalance. That means that when I think tht a disaster threatens and that developments threaten to lead to a destiny for mankind as I wrote concerning the development of technology I, as a member of mankind, must resist and must refuse to accept that destiny. And at that moment we end up doing what mankind has always done at a moment when destiny threatens. Just think of all those Greek tragedies in which mankind stands up against destiny and says: No, I want mankind to survive and I want freedom to survive. At such a moment, you must continue to cherish hope but not the hope that you will achieve a quick victory and even less the hope that we face an easy struggle. We must be convinced that we will carry on fulfilling our role as people. In factit is not an insuperable situation. There is no destiny tht we cannot overcome. You must simply have valid reasons for joining in the struggle. You need a stong conviction. You must really want people to remain, ultimately, people. This struggle against the destiny of technology has been undertaken by us by means of small scale actions. We must continue with small groups of people who know one another. It will not be any big mass of people or any big unions or big political parties who will manage to stop this development. What I have just said doesn’t sound very efficient, of course. When we oppose things which are too efficient we mustn’t try to be even more efficient. For that will not turn out to be the most efficient way. But we must continue to hope that mankind will not die out and will go on passing on truths from generation to generation. (Part 6).

Seventy-two years ago, in 1937 at the height of the New Deal, Walter Lippmann, a repentant Progressive, noted that:

''[W]hile the partisans who are now fighting for the mastery of the modern world wear shirts of different colors, their weapons are drawn from the same armory, their doctrines are variations of the same theme and they go forth to battle singing the same tune with slightly different words....

Throughout the world, in the name of progress, men who call themselves communists, socialists, fascists, nationalists, progressives and even liberals, are unanimous in holding that government with its instruments of coercion, must by commanding the people how they shall live, direct the course of civilization and fix the shape of things to come.... [T]he premises of authoritarian collectivism have become the working beliefs, the self-evident assumptions, the unquestioned axioms, not only of all the revolutionary regimes, but of nearly every effort which lays claim to being enlightened, humane, and progressive.

So universal is the dominion of this dogma over the minds of contemporary men that no one is taken seriously as a statesman or a theorist who does not come forward with proposals to magnify the power of public officials and to extend and multiply their intervention in human affairs. Unless he is authoritarian and collectivist, he is a mossback, a reactionary, at best an amiable eccentric swimming hopelessly against the tide. It is a strong tide. Though despotism is no novelty in human affairs, it is probably true that at no time in twenty-five hundred years has any western government claimed for itself a jurisdiction over men's lives comparable with that which is officially attempted in totalitarian states....

But it is even more significant that in other lands where men shrink from the ruthless policy of these regimes, it is commonly assumed that the movement of events must be in the same direction. Nearly everywhere, the mark of a progressive is that he relies at last upon an increased power of officials to improve the condition of men

...

T]here has come into the world during this generation some new element which makes it necessary for us to undo the work of emancipation, to retrace the steps men have taken to limit the power of rulers, which compels us to believe that the way of enlightenment in affairs is now to be found by intensifying authority and enlarging its scope.''

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/09/soft-despotism-democracys-drift-what-tocqueville-teaches-today