Annas Hammers Physicians' Role in Force-Feeding Gitmo Hunger Strikers
The practice of force-feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay raises serious ethical questions about the role of physicians that need to be resolved at an official level, BUSPH Professor George Annas asserts in a new essay in The Lancet journal.
Annas, chair and professor of health law, bioethics & human rights, writes about two new publications dealing with force-feeding that he says “highlight the problems and help us understand why force-feeding has proven so much more difficult to end than torture.” Both publications – one titled Military Medical Ethics and the other, Interrogations, Forced Feedings, and the Role of Health Professionals – show the stark contrast between the views of the U.S. military, which supports force-feeding, and those of human rights groups, which oppose it.
Annas says the primary ethical issue raised by the continuing hunger strikes at the Guantanamo Bay detention center is the use of military physicians “to break the hunger striker’s will by force-feeding in eight-point restraint chairs.” Those who support the practice say it respects the prisoners by saving their lives; those who oppose it say it constitutes cruel and degrading treatment that deprives prisoners of their human rights.
Annas writes that while it is tempting to believe that the dispute over physicians’ roles in hunger strikes will be settled once Guantanamo is closed, “this may simply move the dispute to the states,” assuming that some prisoners will be transferred to U.S. prisons.
He argues that “it will take more than another workshop” to solve the force-feeding controversy and proposes two options: that the Department of Defense change its current policy guidance on the issue, or that a neutral authoritative body be brought in to mediate the opposing positions of the Defense Department and the World Medical Association.
The full text of Annas’ Perspectives essay is available online.
Submitted by Lisa Chedekel
chedekel@bu.edu