Should Physicians Participate in Force-Feeding Hunger Strikers at Guantanamo?
It is a violation of medical ethics for military physicians to treat competent patients against their will solely for military or political purposes or for punishment. The Department of Defense seems to understand this, and so it has publicly relied on two basic rationales for ordering military physicians to force-feed prisoners: it is in the best medical interest of prisoners, and it is done in accordance with regulations issued by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Prisons regarding hunger strikes in federal prisons.13 Both arguments seem reasonable, but neither fits the facts at Guantanamo. The first — that force-feeding is in the best medical interests of prisoners — is acceptable if it applies only to prisoners who are not actually on hunger strikes (as defined by the International Committee of the Red Cross), but rather have stopped eating because of a mental illness such as depression and can reasonably be declared incompetent to refuse treatment, including force-feeding, if
Related Questions
- How do you establish credibility to have the physicians and service site providers participate in the surveying process?
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