• More Blogs
• Observations »
• Bering in Mind »
• Cross-check »
• Extinction Countdown »
• Solar at Home »
• Expeditions »
• Guest Blog »
• Anecdotes from the Archive »

Last week, The New York Times reported that CIA interrogators subjected 9/11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah to a total of 266 episodes of waterboarding between 2002 and 2003. More recently news broke that top Bush administration officials, including Condoleezza Rice and John Ashcroft, had condoned the practice as early as 2002.

The Obama Administration considers waterboarding – in which a person is strapped on a board with a rag or cloth covering his or her face and doused with water -- a form of torture. So does the United Nations' former High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, according to news reports.

It seems pretty obvious that waterboarding can cause emotional trauma, but does it threaten a person's physical health?

No doubt about it, says Allen Keller, an associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine (who, it should be noted, testified that waterboarding is a form of torture before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2007). During waterboarding, some of this water can flow through the nostrils and into the lungs, Keller explains. Water in the lungs, especially if it's dirty, can cause potentially deadly pneumonia or pleuritis, an inflammation of the lung lining.

Waterboarding could also cause hypoxia, a condition in which the body is not getting enough oxygen, either because the victim is holding his or her breath or inhaling water -- and inadequate oxygen supplies can lead to deadly organ failure, Keller adds.

But don't underestimate how tightly intertwined the physical and psychological experiences of waterboarding are, Keller notes. Since it mimics the terrifying sensation of drowning, it triggers the release of stress hormones called catecholamines that can cause heart rate and blood pressure to soar, potentially setting the stage for heart attack in a person with underlying heart disease, he says.

But even healthy people can die from sheer terror, as Martin A. Samuels, chairman of the neurology department at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston told ScientificAmerican.com earlier this year. The sudden outpouring of stress hormones can cause the heart to beat abnormally, hampering its ability to deliver blood to the body.

Waterboarding might be an ideal way to cause a fear-induced heart problem, Samuels speculates, pointing to experiments by the late Johns Hopkins psychobiologist Curt Richter, who in the 1950s created what he called a "swimming" jar for wild rats that was partially filled with water, allowing them to swim but not escape. The rats often died, and when Richter examined their hearts, he found damage suggesting stress hormones caused heart muscle cells to contract uncontrollably, Samuels explains.  

"Make no mistake about it, [waterboarding] is a profoundly traumatic event," Keller says. "The physical and psychological and social aspects are all interdependent and feed off one another."

©iStockphoto.com/varela

3 Comments

1. 1. Iahmad 05:54 AM 5/2/09

   Imagine if the technique is practiced on USA sponsored terrorists by other nations. UN, NATO and all Human Right organizations will demand for head of people who condoned and practiced it. But here we are. Bush, Cheney, Condy and other racist criminals are enjoying free life. All western hypocrite and immoral regimes will make noise if Sri Lanka government uses torture on LTTE terrorists. While the Gaza genocide was fully backed by US, Europe, NATO, UN etc; all these criminal organizations and nations are demanding Sri Lanka to stop its war on terror. The worls is indeed shameless.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

2. 2. ejp 06:40 AM 5/9/09

   That's like asking "does rape have long term physical effects?"
   
   It's an idiotic and misguided question. Torture is never right, is illegal and is a war crime. Period.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

3. 3. Grace_E 04:35 AM 6/1/09

   This website is not exactly correct; The C.I.A does not use dirty water as in foreign countries so that rules out pneumonia, and waterboarding is such an effective method (used to try and save US citizens lives) that it only takes about thirty seconds for the prisoner to surrender information. Therefore, it would just be like holding your breath so there goes the idea of your body not getting enough oxygen. As to the other forms of "long term physical harm" how much water can get in your lungs in thirty seconds?It is usually only done once or twice but in some cases like the only two that the Obama admnistration released(of course they were the most beneficial) i guess there could be some physical damage but these situations do not happen excessively; so what a little strain to a terrorist for the safety of our nation?
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this