Medical torture describes the involvement and sometimes participation of medical personnel in acts of torture, either to judge what victims can endure, to apply treatments which will enhance torture, or as torturers in their own right. Medical torture may be called medical interrogation if it involves the use of their expert medical knowledge to facilitate interrogation or corporal punishment, in the conduct of torturous human experimentation or in providing professional medical sanction and approval for the torture of prisoners. Medical torture also covers torturous scientific (or pseudo-scientific) experimentation upon unwilling human subjects. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights' When Healers Harm campaign, health professionals were complicit in the torture and abuse of detainees during U.S. President George W. Bush's "war on terror". Health professionals, including medical doctors, psychiatrists, medical examiners, psychologists, and nurses, have been implicated in the torture and abuse of prisoners in CIA secret prisons and military detention centers, such as those in Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Among other things, health professionals are accused of:

• crafting abusive tactics and falsely legitimizing their use;

• advised interrogators on methods of abuse that would exploit prisoners’ vulnerabilities;

• using medical procedures to harm prisoners;

• gauging pain and monitoring interrogations that risked leaving prisoners in need of treatment;

• checking prisoners to certify that they were capable of surviving additional abuse;

• conditioning medical or mental health treatment on cooperation with interrogation;

• sharing confidential patient information that was used to harm patients;

• covering up evidence of torture and abuse; and

• turning a blind eye to cruel treatment.

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