{"id":58377,"date":"2015-07-16T13:34:56","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T17:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=58377"},"modified":"2015-07-23T17:14:59","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T21:14:59","slug":"guild-interests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2015\/07\/16\/guild-interests\/","title":{"rendered":"guild interests…"},"content":{"rendered":"
Much of what I write about here has to do with the corruption of the medical record by industry funded clinical trials that have distorted both the efficacy and the safety of our treatments – specifically in psychiatry. But the topic has really been the erosion of the medical ethic of the authors and editors that have allowed [and placed] these studies in our literature. We’re fortunate to be in a time when there’s a palpable movement afoot to do something about it. This post is also about ethics, but in a related professional arena – organized psychology. <\/div>\n

After 911, the country was united in a surge of patriotic zeal that the Bush Administration used to take us into a war with Iraq that we would have declined in other circumstances. The prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and torture at Guantanamo Bay were among the many disillusioning revelations that came out of that war. We learned that two DoD contract psychologists, Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, had a central role in the development and implementation of the enhanced interrogation techniques<\/font><\/em> [AKA Torture]. Less widely known, the APA [American Psychological Association] also had a part in this story – specifically addressing the ethical obligations of the psychologists involved in the interrogation process. <\/p>\n

Last Friday, the APA released an independently commissioned report focusing on the details – specifically the actions of the APA’s Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security [PENS]<\/font> in 2005 and the years that followed. Here are a few snippets from the Press Release and 500+ page report. It’s not pretty:
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Press Release and Recommended Actions: Independent Review Cites Collusion Among APA Individuals and Defense Department Officials in Policy on Interrogation Techniques<\/a><\/div>\n
American Psychological Association<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
June 10, 2015<\/div>\n

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… The Hoffman report contains deeply disturbing findings that reveal previously unknown and troubling instances of collusion,” said Dr. Susan McDaniel, a member of the Independent Review’s Special Committee. “The process by which the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security [PENS] was created, the composition of the membership, the content of the PENS report and the subsequent activities related to the report were influenced by collusion between a small group of APA representatives and government officials.<\/div>\n

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The Hoffman report states that the intent of the individuals who participated in the collusion was to “curry favor” with the Defense Department, and that may have enabled the government’s use of abusive interrogation techniques. As a result, the 2005 PENS report became a document based at least as much on the desires of the DoD as on the needs of the psychology profession and the APA’s commitment to human rights…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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The Hoffman Report<\/a><\/div>\n
Sidley Austin law firm<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
by Douglas Hoffman<\/div>\n
Commisioned by the American Psychological Association<\/font><\/strong> <\/div>\n
June 2015<\/div>\n

«from the Hoffman Report, page 14<\/a><\/em>»<\/p>\n

APA’s motive to please DoD<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

The very substantial benefits APA obtained from DoD help explain APA’s motive to please DoD. and show that APA likely had an organizational conflict of interest, which it needed to take steps to guard against. DoD is one of the largest employers of psychologists and provides many millions of dollars in grants or contracts for psychologists around the country. The history of DoD providing critical assistance to the advancement and growth of psychology as a profession is well documented, and includes DoD’s creation of a prescription-privileges "demonstration project" in which psychologists were certified to prescribe psychiatric drugs within DoD after going through a two-year training course. While APA took one significant step in 1991 that disappointed many military psychologists — refusing to allow DoD ads in APA’s publications because of DoD’s discriminatory position regarding gays and lesbians in the military — APA had lifted its advertising ban in 2004. And by the time of the PENS Task Force, contemporaneous internal discussions show that improving APA’s already strong relationship with DoD was a clear priority for officials working on the PENS Task Force. <\/p>\n

In addition, at the time of the task force’s creation, DoD was in the midst of developing policy about how psychologists and psychiatrists could participate in interrogations and other intelligence-collection activities. APA wanted to positively influence DoD regarding this policy so that psychologists would be included to the maximum degree possible, and psychologists would not lose the lead role to psychiatrists. APA used the pro-DoD task force composition and report to show its strong support to DoD, with the hope or expectation that APA would be rewarded with a very prominent role for psychologists in this new policy. And in fact, the policy did provide a very prominent role for psychologists, a fact celebrated by the APA officials who had worked most closely on the task force…<\/p>\n

«from the Hoffman Report, page 9<\/a><\/em>»<\/p>\n

lV. SUMMARY OF THE INVESTIGATION’S CONCLUSIONS<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

Our principal findings relate to the 2005 task force, which was formally empaneled by the APA President and was called the Presidential Task Force on Ethics and National Security, or "PENS." The task force finalized a report on June 26, 2005 containing 12 ethical guidelines that were adopted as official APA ethics policy by the APA Board on an emergency basis less than one week later.<\/p>\n

Our investigation determined that key APA officials, principally the APA Ethics Director joined and supported at times by other APA officials, colluded with important DoD officials to haw APA issue loose, high-level ethical guidelines that did not constrain DoD in any greater fashion than existing DoD interrogation guidelines. We concluded that APA’s principal motive in doing so was to align APA and curry favor with DoD. There were two other important motives: to create a good public-relations response, and to keep the growth of psychology unrestrained in this area.<\/p>\n

We also found that in the three years following the adoption of the 2005 PENS Task Force report as APA policy, APA officials engaged in a pattern of secret collaboration with DoD officials to defeat efforts by the APA Council of Representatives to introduce and pass resolutions that would haw definitively prohibited psychologists from participating in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. detention centers abroad. The principal APA official involved in these efforts was once again the APA Ethics Director, who effectively formed an undisclosed joint venture with a small number of DoD officials to ensure that APA’s statements and actions fell squarely in line with DoD’s goals and preferences. In numerous confidential email exchanges and conversations, the APA Ethics Director regularly sought and received pre-clearance from an influential, senior psychology leader in the U.S. Army Special Operations Command before determining what APA’s position should be. what its public statements should say. and what strategy to pursue on this issue…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I’ve only read the 73 page Executive Summary, but the facts are pretty clear. In response to the revelations of the involvement of psychologists in the torture of prisoners, the APA quickly gathered a Task Force to clarify the APA’s ethical guidelines. The Ethics Director assembled a Task Force heavily weighted with DoD psychologists and created guidelines with vague generalities that essentially allowed the DoD to continue doing what they were doing. The dissenting non-DoD psychologists on the Task Force were lied to about some future specific limits on the interrogations. All of this was done in close [private] consultation with the DoD itself, a collusion that continued for the duration of the Bush Administration. It was a sham, motivated by currying favor with the DoD in a guild competition with psychiatry; an attempt at mitigating against bad PR; but it had nothing to do with the manifest topic – the ethics of the torture program. Input from the representative body or general membership of the APA was carefully avoided.<\/div>\n

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This report documents how guild interests can corrupt the basic values of the guild itself. In spite of the dark side revealed here, the APA deserves praise for commissioning this report and revising ethical guidelines based on the findings. Psychiatry could learn a thing or two from this example. A similar investigation into the widespread participation of academic psychiatrists in the authorship of jury-rigged industry-funded clinical trials and other drug marketing collusions is long overdue…<\/div>\n
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see also:<\/div>\n