Letter to the Editor

Mason, Diana J.

doi:10.1016/j.outlook.2009.10.006

« Previous Next »Nursing Outlook
Volume 58, Issue 1 , Pages 5-6, January 2010

Letter to the Editor

Rudin Professor and Director, Center for Health, Media, and Policy, Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing, City University of New York, AJN Editor-in-Chief Emeritus

Article Outline

References
Copyright

To the editor:

I read with interest the editorial “Reflections on courage” in the September/October 2009 issue of the journal that discussed nurses' possible participation in the torture and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo.¹ The statement that “…no one in nursing had taken up this ‘call to action’” is incorrect. In the October 2004 issue of the American Journal of Nursing (AJN), I wrote an editorial that addressed this important matter.² I pointed out that the American nursing community had said little on the topic. In the same issue, we published a continuing education article on caring for survivors of torture, in recognition that torture is widespread in the world and we may be living next to or caring for someone who has been one of its victims.³

Then, in the January, March, and April 2005 issues of the journal, we published a number of letters to the editor in response to the editorial, including one from Canadian nurse Agar-Newman that was also sent to the American Nurses Association (ANA) and questioned the association's response to the reports of torture.⁴ The American Journal of Nursing published a response to that letter from then ANA President Barbara Blakeney, noting that ANA had sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld supporting an investigation into the allegations of healthcare providers' involvement in the abuses at Guantanamo. The letter to the Secretary was sent after the October 2004 editorial and, I believe, after Agar-Newman's letter had been received by ANA.

I also heard from other military nurses who pointed out that they did report abuses but could not speak publicly about their actions. One of the letters in response to my editorial was from a former military nurse who acknowledged that “some did commit injustices” but defended her colleagues and reprimanded me for suggesting that all military nurses who served there were suspect⁵—something I did not say but was clearly felt by this nurse and other current and former military nurses with whom I spoke.

This is a sensitive issue that challenges our profession and our nation. The history of torture in the world is longstanding and awful. We should not presume that our nation's current enlightenment about saying “no” to torture, whether waterboarding or other dressed-up means of physically and mentally abusing people for whatever reason, will remain. Our country has yet to request a public hearing on healthcare professionals' roles in the abuses at Guantanamo. Until such hearings are held, we cannot know whether our nurse colleagues who served there are heroes or collaborators.

Back to Article Outline