Force-Feeding Déjà vu

When this blog was still a new kid on the block, in 2014, we ran an extended series on hunger strikes and force-feeding of Guantanamo prisoners.  Now, nearly five years later, the issue has come around again, as the AP and other news outlets report (and ICE confirms) that a number of immigration detainees in the US, staging hunger strikes to protest their treatment, are being forcibly fed by ICE.  Human Rights Watch provides a human rights analysis of this assault on human dignity.  And in 2015, the AMA Journal of Ethics published a case study explaining why force-feeding violates medical ethics and is, quite  plainly, wrong.  Physicians for Human Rights applies these general ethical principles to the specific facts of today and concurs, writing in a press release on February 4:

“Force-feeding is unethical, cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, and – in some cases – the practice can amount to torture. These detainees are hunger striking to protest their conditions of confinement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. courts must recognize hunger strikes as political protest and respond to their concerns, not shackle and force-feed them. Doctors must not be forced to violate their professional obligation to respect the informed decisions of a competent patient.”