Throughout our fund’s 11 year history we have had a special focus on recognizing individuals working to promote human rights and especially those fighting to end torture. The deliberate infliction of pain and suffering on a fellow human can destroy the humanity of the victim and is deeply debilitating to the torturer as well. Torture is so antithetical to healthy human functioning that its use invariably corrupts the systems that permit it.
We have been inspired to hear about your human rights work. For 25 years you were the medical director for the American Refugee Committee, which included serving as the chief medical officer for 45,000 refugees on the Thai/Cambodian border and projects in Sudean, Croatia, BosniaHerzogovina and the Thai/Burma order. Since then you have become a professor of medicine and bioethics at the University of Minnesota Medical School and been recognized with numerous leadership positions and awards in your profession.
In recent years you have pursued an absolute passion to expose the complicity of physicians in torture practices. You have amassed an archive of 60,000 government documents describing the medical system in the war on terror prisons which has become the standard archive on the subject and receives 1.5 million visitors a year. Your latest book, Oath Betrayed: America’s Torture Doctors, lays out your findings. Your latest project in this area, a website to assist the growing international movement to hold doctors accountable, is receiving 6000 visitors a month.
The power behind your work is made clear by the phrase from your translation of the Hippocratic Oath: “from what is to their harm or injustice I will keep them”.
The unifying characteristic of the 69 Sullivan Ballou award recipients that have preceded you is is that they shared with Sullivan Ballou a commitment to act on the messages from their hearts without consideration of personal gain. You belong squarely within this exemplary group. We have been awed by the years of tireless effort, the simple amount of work you have accomplished as you have followed your heart. We are honored and delighted to be able to recognize you in this small way.
Thank you for what your are doing. We have all been complicit to some degree, and we feel better having a fellow citizen like you.Congratulations!
Elissa and Bruce Peterson, Founding Members