On Thursday, the California Legislature adopted SJR 19, a resolution to prevent the state's licensed health professionals from engaging in torture.

As a result of SJR 19, state medical boards will inform health professionals of their obligations under both domestic and international law regarding treatment of prisoners and detainees. They will be warned that if they participate in interrogations that do not conform to these standards, they risk future prosecution. The state will also request the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency to remove California doctors and psychologists from settings that fall short of international standards of treatment.

The myth that the U.S. does not torture is coming apart at the seams. Every week there are new revelations of misconduct. The abuses are not the result of "a few bad apples," but rather stem from a short-sighted and reckless policy that has damaged the lives of countless people held in U.S. custody, attacked the emotional and spiritual well-being of American soldiers who have witnessed it and undermined the moral authority of America in the world community.

"Coercive," "rough" or "enhanced" interrogations - whatever euphemism that is used for torture - threaten to betray the values and the vision upon which this country was founded. Nowhere is our ethical, legal and moral dilemma more pronounced than in the case of doctors and psychologists who have been complicit in torture and the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners and detainees.

In Oath Betrayed: Medical Complicity in the War on Terror, Dr. Steven Miles documents the collaboration of physicians in prisoner abuse, their failure to report that abuse, the falsification of medical records and their use of patient histories for designing coercive interrogation plans. Reports from the International Red Cross, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet (a British medical journal) as well as the latest Physicians for Human Rights report confirm this disturbing phenomenon.

From previously-classified government reports, we now know that a group of psychologists were involved in the "reverse engineering" of techniques that came out of the U.S. military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape Program to break down prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. We know that health professionals were present when the CIA used the internationally-condemned practice of waterboarding on detainees. We know that the former commander of the U.S. Navy Hospital at Guantánamo Bay was a California-licensed physician.

When those that are charged to "do no harm" become accomplices to torture, the contrast between our society's principles and practices is made startlingly clear.

A Harvard Medical School survey found that one-third of medical students didn't know the law regarding torture. They found that 94 percent of medical students receive only 60 minutes of instruction on the issue!

SJR 19, introduced by State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), is designed to protect the integrity of the health professions as well as the individual practitioners - by informing them of their legal and ethical obligations, and giving them a legal reference to remove themselves from abusive situations should they have to contravene the orders of a military superior.

In debate over SJR 19 in the Capitol, one argument put forth against it was that California should not be getting involved in a national issue. Yet, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the role of licensing and regulating the health professions has historically been the province of the individual states. Surely California has an interest in seeing that its licensed doctors, psychologists and nurses are held accountable to ethical standards.

Another argument raised was that the military physician's oath to the Constitution should take precedence over the Hippocratic Oath. Aside from the fact that allegiance to the Constitution would include upholding the Bill of Rights - as well as Article Six that makes treaties such as the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention Against Torture the law of the land - there is an even greater reason to have supported this legislation. By whatever name and in whichever land, torture is immoral and illegal. And to the healing arts it must be anathema.

SJR 19 is "just" a resolution, However, it now represents the official position of one of the most influential states in the union. New York is considering a similar measure. The resolution breaks the silence on the grave issue of torture. It upholds the ethics of our healing professions, and it represents a first step toward ending a policy of prisoner abuse and restoring American ideals.

As a democratic society, we possess no greater treasure than our moral integrity. It is the best of who we are, and it is a legacy that we are determined to protect for the next generation.