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Thursday, May 2, 2013

The Role of Medical Professionals Related to Hunger Strikes at Guantanamo

Obama to Seek Closing Amid Hunger Strikes at Guantanamo

By Charlie Savage
The New York Times
Originally published April 30, 2013

Here is a piece of the article:

Last week, the president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Jeremy A. Lazarus, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel saying that any doctor who participated in forcing a prisoner to eat against his will was violating “core ethical values of the medical profession.”

“Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions,” Dr. Lazarus wrote.

He also noted that the A.M.A. endorses the World Medical Association’s Tokyo Declaration, a 1975 statement forbidding doctors to use their medical knowledge to facilitate torture. It says that if a prisoner makes “an unimpaired and rational judgment” to refuse nourishment, “he or she shall not be fed artificially.”

The military’s policy, however, is that it can and should preserve the life of a detainee by forcing him to eat if necessary.

“In the case of a hunger strike, attempted suicide or other attempted serious self-harm, medical treatment or intervention may be directed without the consent of the detainee to prevent death or serious harm,” a military policy directive says. “Such action must be based on a medical determination that immediate treatment or intervention is necessary to prevent death or serious harm and, in addition, must be approved by the commanding officer of the detention facility or other designated senior officer responsible for detainee operations.”

On Monday, Colonel House also said that some detainees on the “enteral feeding” list were drinking the supplement.

“Just because the detainees are approved for enteral feeding does not mean they don’t eat a regular meal,” he said. “Once the detainees leave their cell and are in the presence of medical personnel, most of the detainees who are approved for tube feeding will eat or drink without the peer pressure from inside the cellblock.”

Medical ethicists and the Pentagon also clashed during the Bush administration over hunger strikes at Guantánamo.

The entire article is here.