Sir, - Your report of the US Defence Secretary's attitude to the Taliban captives in Cuba makes depressing reading (The Irish Times, January 28th).
He clearly avoids the humanitarian question of whether or not these captives are receiving the treatment that he would expect for his own citizens if positions were reversed.
From the pictures in the press the captives are being detained in circumstances designed to deprive them of as much sensory input as is possible. Even the sensations transmitted from their joints and muscles, which give a basic sense of physical orientation, have been restricted by the manacles and shackles attached to their upper and lower limbs.
Sensory deprivation of this kind has been recognised for at least a century-and-a-half (since its introduction in Melbourne State Penitentiary) to inevitably produce a seriously disturbed or psychotic state.
It was quickly discontinued in that institution. The US, in its treatment of captives, should not allow itself to sink to the Taliban's well attested barbaric standards. - Yours, etc.,
Dr PETER KIRWAN, Consltant Psychiatrist, O'Connell Avenue, Limerick.