Bioethics

Art Caplan: Support Nurse Who Resisted Force-Feeding at Guantanamo

By Arthur Caplan Art Caplan has a new piece supporting the nurse who resisted force-feeding at Guantanamo, on NBC News: Lost in all the talk about the CIA’s history of brutal interrogation tactics after Sept. 11 is this: A real live case involving a U.S. Navy nurse on trial for what he did not do…

Published:

By Arthur Caplan

Art Caplan has a new piece supporting the nurse who resisted force-feeding at Guantanamo, on NBC News:

Lost in all the talk about the CIA’s history of brutal interrogation tactics after Sept. 11 is this: A real live case involving a U.S. Navy nurse on trial for what he did not do at the notorious Guantanamo prison.

The nurse, in his 18th year in the Navy, volunteered to serve at Guantanamo, where some of those being held prisoner went on hunger strikes. They were following a long tradition going back to the H-Block Irish hunger strikers in Britain who found no other way to protest their internment and prison conditions but to refuse food.

The Navy brass at Gitmo decided that these prisoners were going to eat. They dragged them out of their cells, put them in full body restraints, shoved a tube through their nose and down into their stomachs and force-fed them with artificial food.

Read the full article here.

 

About the author

  • Art Caplan

    Art Caplan is a bioethicist and has been a long time Bill of Health contributor. He is the Director of the Division of Medical Ethics in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Medical Center