Guantánamo's medical victims

The reputation of the United States will be seriously damaged by its use of the anti-malarial drug mefloquine, marketed as Lariam, on all detainees at Guantánamo Bay. According to several studies, most notably those published in the British Medical Journal in 2001 and 2003, the drug causes severe neuropsychological side-effects, including depression, hallucinations, and homicidal and suicidal thoughts. These are of a greater intensity than those caused by other anti-malarials. Lariam's manufacturers, Roche, recorded suicidal side-effects in the 1990s, and even the U.S. military's procedures for treating its own personnel prefer the use of other drugs. Medical staff at Guantánamo assumed, however, that all detainees were at risk of malaria; they also claimed that 40 per cent of the Afghan population was infected, when the World Health Organisation's figure for 2002 was 13 per cent. They did not even test the detainees for malaria in advance, and administered doses of 1250 mg, which were five times the normal prophylactic dose. Nor was there any prior investigation for contraindicating conditions, which include pre-existing post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety.

The issues go beyond the comment by a U.S. army public health physician that the use of mefloquine at Guantánamo was an “egregious malpractice.”

First, the Bush administration's disregard of the scientific evidence was consistent with its contempt for all evidence that did not support its policies. Over Lariam, it ignored its own documents stating there was no risk that malaria would be reintroduced to Cuba by carriers at Guantánamo; the good health island has been malaria-free for half a century. Washington also imposed a veil of secrecy. Military doctors who raised doubts about mefloquine were ordered to remain silent, and President Bush gave the Secretary of Health and Human Services unprecedented authority to classify information.

Researchers at the Seton Hall School of Law have concluded that by the government's own analysis, the use of mefloquine at Guantánamo may have breached U.S. federal law and the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Mr. Bush decreed furthermore that the Convention did not apply to detainees in the ‘War on Terror.' His Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, ordered that the requirement for informed consent could be waived when “medical products” were being developed for the armed forces. The combination of secrecy and mendacity strengthens the likelihood that at Guantánamo the U.S. military engaged in medical experimentation on captives. The modern history of that practice is sheer evil. Hindu News