Gitmo Force Feedings

In response to over a decade of indefinite detention without charges or trial, with no foreseeable hope of ever being repatriated home, with no hope of ever seeing wives and children again, over 100 inmates at the American Gulag in Cuba are now participating in a mass hunger strike.  Of the 100, our medical personnel in Guantanamo are now force feeding 21 of them using silastic nasogastric tubes.  (The above image is the chair at Gitmo used to restrain prisoners while the tubes are forcibly inserted.)The American Medical Association (AMA) has again gone on the record condemning the practice of forced feedings.  In a letter to Defense Secretary Hagel, AMA President Dr. Jeremy Lazarus wrote: “Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions, ” Lazarus said, adding that the AMA took the same position on force-feeding Guantánamo prisoners in 2009 and 2005.“The AMA has long endorsed the World Medical Association Declaration of Tokyo, which is unequivocal on the point: ‘Where a prisoner refuses nourishment and is considered by the physician as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary ref usal of nourishment,he or she shall not be fed artificially. ’”Let us be clear: force feeding constitutes an assault on human dignity.  It violates a physician's ethical obligation to respect a patient's autonomy.&n...
Source: Buckeye Surgeon - Category: Surgery Authors: Source Type: blogs