In an article to be published Saturday, Steven Miles of the University of Minnesota charged that medical personnel collaborated with the military "in designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations."

"Medical personnel evaluated detainees for interrogation, and monitored coercive interrogation, allowed interrogators to use medical records to develop interrogation approaches, falsified medical records and death certificates, and failed to provide basic health care," the Lancet article said.

The Pentagon said the charges were "serious and far-reaching" but said the article painted "an inaccurate picture of how medical personnel performed their duties and upheld their obligations."

"The Department of Defense takes strong exception to these allegations and (Miles's) wholesale indictment of the medical care rendered by US personnel to prisoners and detainees," said Lieutenant Colonel Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

"Although investigations have not been completed, we have no evidence that military medical personnel collaborated with abusive behavior by interrogators or guards, or condoned any abusive behaviors," she said.

"There is no evidence that final death certificates were falsified," she said.

The Pentagon promised a "full and fair review" of the matters raised by the article, noting that investigations were underway into all aspects of prison and detainee operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Thursday that an investigation into the role of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib prison cited some medical personnel for failing to report evidence of abuse among prisoners they had treated.

The prison is at the center of an abuse scandal that erupted earlier this year with the disclosure of hundreds of photographs of guards abusing and sexually humiliating naked Iraqi prisoners.

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