Controversial Drug Given to All Guantanamo Detainees Akin to "Pharmacologic Waterboarding"
A two-month investigation lead by Truthout's Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye reveals for the first time that the Defense Department forced all "war on terror" detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called "pharmacologic waterboarding."
The US military administered the drug despite Pentagon knowledge that mefloquine caused severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and anxiety. The drug was used on the prisoners whether they had malaria or not.
Interviews with mefloquine and malaria experts and a review of peer-reviewed journals and hundreds of pages of government documents show there were no preexisting cases where mefloquine was ever prescribed for mass presumptive treatment of malaria. The use of the drug in this manner may have violated a provision in the anti-torture statute related to "mind altering substances or other procedures" that "profoundly disrupts the senses or the personality."
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