Is sleep deprivation "real" torture?

[Mobiboros]

Depending on the individual, it can take between 100 and 200 hours of sleep deprivation to induce hallucinations, as the mind steadily loses its capabilities. .

That's a very high estimate. Most studies show that hallucinations set in between 24 and 48 hours of sleep deprivation. Usually it's just flashes or eprceived motion in your peripheral vision but it get's progressively worse and auditory, tactile and olfactory hallucinations can set in as well.

[Androsphinx]

Bumped for expert commentary

Comment by Professor Jim Horne on the citation of selected extracts of his book ‘Why We Sleep’, in apparently justifying sleep deprivation as a ‘safe coercive technique’

My book ‘Why We Sleep’ was written without any thought of ‘coercive techniques’ in mind. Nevertheless I made it very clear that pure sleep deprivation in otherwise happy healthy volunteers, as in laboratory settings without additional stresses, is not very eventful for the body, while it is much more so for our brain and behaviour. Whereas sleep helps people withstand stress, sleep loss makes us more vulnerable to other stresses, especially as the inherent sleepiness and other adverse effects on the brain confuse the mind’s ability to figure out how to deal with and avoid these stresses. Thus I emphasise that my book’s conclusions were based on ‘pure sleep deprivation’ without additional stresses. Such findings were derived from otherwise undemanding and benign laboratory studies that do not typify the real world, whereas people are usually sleep deprived because of other stresses such as long and arduous working hours, family crises, etc. Healthy people who have volunteered for sleep deprivation experiments are usually well cosseted by their experimenters, perhaps too much so, and might have been inadvertently protected from the full effects of sleep loss. Apart from the sleep deprivation, volunteers typically lead a tranquil existence, are fed very well and, except for having periodically to undergo various harmless tests, have plenty of time for relaxation, reading and watching TV. There have been many of these experiments with human volunteers, with the longest lasting 8-11 days. Volunteers can pull out any time and there is full medical cover. The purpose of these studies has been to explore what sleep does for the body and brain, by removing sleep and see what happens. Under these circumstances, the ‘body’ copes well, whereas the brain and behaviour are obviously affected – not only by sleepiness but by more subtle changes whereby individuals can no longer think for themselves and become more like automatons.

With additional stresses as in ‘coercive techniques’, the situation for the sleep deprived victim becomes deplorable, as the mind and brain under these circumstances trigger the body’s defences to create a physiological ‘alarm reaction’ whereby, for example, various stress coping hormones are mobilised and prepare the body for possible trauma, even blood loss. I emphasise that this alarm reaction is not present under ‘pure sleep loss’ as I have just described. Prolonged stress with sleep deprivation will lead to a physiological exhaustion of the body’s defence mechanisms, physical collapse, and with the potential for various ensuing illnesses. We don’t know at what point this latter phase would be reached with ‘coercive techniques’, but to claim that 180 hours is safe in these respects, is nonsense. Moreover, whereas physical pain may not be particularly apparent even at this stage, the mental pain would be all too evident, and arguably worse than physical pain.

Even if one was to be pragmatic and claim that this form of sleep deprivation produced ‘desired results’, I would doubt whether the state of mind would be able to produce credible information, unaffected by delusion, fantasy or suggestibility.

Whilst Bradbury’s memo acknowledges (p36) that, “We note that there are important differences between interrogation technique used by the CIA and the controlled experiments documented in the literature” – i.e. what I wrote might not be wholly applicable to ‘coercive techniques’, this key point was understated. I had no knowledge of this memo or its contents until a few days ago, and am both saddened and appalled that my book has been used in this way.

Jim Horne

Sleep Research Centre, Loughborough University, UK
20th April 2009

[Elfdart]

I found this at Slate:

Slate Magazine
explainer
Can You Die From Lack of Sleep?
The dangers of being really, really tired.
By Brian Palmer
Posted Monday, May 11, 2009, at 7:35 PM ET

CIA interrogators at Guantanamo Bay subjected dozens of detainees to sleep deprivation, shackling the prisoners in a standing position for up to 11 days at a time. Recently released Justice Department memorandums claim sleep deprivation studies show that "surprisingly, little seem to go wrong with the subjects physically." Wait, is it really safe to go without sleep?

No—extended bouts of sleeplessness can cause an array of physical symptoms and might eventually kill you. The effects begin within the first 24 hours of sleep deprivation. First, the body undergoes subtle hormonal changes—cortisol and TSH levels increase, leading to a rise in blood pressure. A day or two later, it stops metabolizing glucose properly, creating carbohydrate cravings. (This phenomenon may have gone unnoticed among the detainees, who were already on a calorie-restricted diet.) A person's body temperature will also drop, and his or her immune response becomes somewhat suppressed. All of these physiological changes are reversible, though—take a nap, and you'll be on the road back to normal.

It's possible that given enough time, sleep deprivation can kill you. While no human being is known to have died from staying awake, animal research strongly suggests it could happen. In the 1980s, a University of Chicago researcher named Allan Rechtschaffen conducted a series of groundbreaking experiments on rats. After 32 days of total sleep deprivation, all the rats were dead. Curiously, researchers still do not agree on the cause of death. It's possible that the rats' body temperature dropped so much that they succumbed to hypothermia. Another theory posits that the rats' immune systems became so depressed that bacteria normally sequestered in their intestines spread throughout their bodies—though Rechtschaffen counters that his rats perished even when they were administered antibiotics. A third explanation points to some evidence of brain damage among the sleep-deprived rats. It's also possible that extreme levels of stress contributed to the rats' demise.

There's every reason to believe that humans would experience the same end result if they were kept awake for long enough. Our knowledge of prolonged, complete sleep deprivation in humans is limited because intolerable psychological effects such as hallucination and paranoia take hold long before the more severe physical symptoms. Most human studies involve no more than two to three days of complete deprivation or a week of partial sleep deficits. Data on more prolonged sleep deprivation come from anecdotes, animal research, or surveys of chronically sleep-deprived groups like medical residents.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Charles A. Czeisler of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, James B. Maas of Cornell University, Amita Sehgal of the University of Pennsylvania, and Jerry Siegel of UCLA.
Brian Palmer is a freelance writer living in Columbia, Md.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2218092/

One factor to consider is that inmates who are locked up and mistreated to begin with will suffer much more than someone who simply stays awake.

[Androsphinx]

To be charitable, I don't think that senior administration officials realised all the details of what they were authorizing in that respect. Remember Rumsfeld's note that "I stand for six to eight hours a day"?

[Edi]

To be charitable, I don't think that senior administration officials realised all the details of what they were authorizing in that respect. Remember Rumsfeld's note that "I stand for six to eight hours a day"?

They were fully capable of understanding the objctions, but they simply did not give a shit. If it wasn't what they wanted to hear, they actively ignored it or lied about it.