Albuquerque Tribune reporter Maria Cranor reports. Excerpt:
An Albuquerque doctor and senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories is urging New Mexico doctors not to cooperate with a new federal polygraph policy that now provides for medical waivers.
In a letter sent Thursday to the New Mexico Board of Medical Examiners, Dr. Alan Zelicoff wrote: “Physicians would be ill-advised to participate in any way in conforming with this onerous government requirement.”
Contending there is no “documented validity” for the Department of Energy to use lie detector tests for counterintelligence screening, Zelicoff asked the board to advise New Mexico physicians they could risk “committing an ethical infraction.” He said he believes they risk violating patient confidentiality.
Efforts to obtain comment from DOE headquarters and the state board were not successful.
The new policy, announced in a DOE memo earlier this month, sets out the conditions whereby Sandia employees required to take polygraphs under a congressional directive may seek medical waivers from DOE polygraphy requirements.
The change requires polygraph candidates to submit evidence of a medical condition or medication that might affect the polygraph results.
Zelicoff contends there is no way for doctors to make that determination.
…
In a separate letter to Robinson and Sandia Executive Vice President Joan Woodard, Zelicoff said the new DOE policy “falls far short of addressing the specific concerns” voiced by Sandia’s medical and technical staff.
He wrote he is “most deeply troubled” by the department putting lab employees and their physicians into the position of having to assess which medical conditions or drugs might be relevant without any medical or scientific studies to guide them.
Zelicoff said he feels his continued objections to the department’s polygraph program might be potentially damaging to him personally.
Yet, he wrote Robinson: “It is not possible for me to sit quietly in the face of an attempt on the part of the DOE OCI (Office of Counterintelligence) to coerce the New Mexico medical community into being complicit in acts that are both unethical and destructive of the doctor-patient relationship.”