Gregg M. Bloche, M.D., J.D., is an expert in health care fi nance law and policy as well as biomedical ethics. He is Professor of Law at Georgetown University, Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a Visiting Fellow of The Brookings Institution and the Harvard Program on Ethics and Health. In 2005, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Dr. Bloche’s recent work exposes the use of sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, suffocation, religious-based humiliation, sexual provocation, and beatings in the interrogations of Guantánamo Bay detainees. In an interview with P.H., he discusses the role of physicians in the interrogations and their ethical considerations.

P.H.: Can you please give us an overview of your most recent work?

Dr. Bloche: I’m working on a book about public partnerships in medicine and the undivided loyalty of doctors to their patients. We need to accept the reality that physicians don’t just serve patients—they serve a variety of public purposes. Public health is one example, but other examples include setting limits on healthcare spending, criminal justice, and national security. Even as we accept this reality, we need to keep an eye towards preserving the therapeutic credibility of the profession. Also, we need to keep an eye on the limits of medical technology and medical judgment.

The interrogation issue [at Guantánamo Bay] illustrates this. Even civilian leaders of the Pentagon, including Mr. Rumsfeld, believe that there is a quick technological fi x to the task of interrogation and that psychiatrists and psychologists can solve the problem. In fact, the problem can only be solved by weaving together strands of what people say, fi nding contradictions, and eventually honing in and putting the pieces together. There’s no substitute for the really hard work of interrogation.

There are other examples where we, as a society, idealize what medical technology and medical judgment can do. Doctors are all too often ready to support those ideals in order to seize opportunities for themselves. More often than not, medical technology falls short.