And you don’t see the possibility that allowing a person to harm himself might not be the right thing morally?
I realize you probably don’t. I can’t ever think of a time when you’ve said you see both sides of an argument.
When they have an obvious rational reason to want to die? And when the people who want him alive are torturers? No.
A person in his right mind? Nope, I don’t.
To me, it’s all about *informed *refusal. And that’s surprisingly easy to determine just by talking to a person.
If he thinks refusing food will win him freedom, that would not be informed refusal.
If he thinks refusing food will not kill him, because his god will save his life by giving his body the ability to survive on nothing, that would not be informed refusal. (although religious claims are the hardest to evaluate. If he was a lifelong Breatharian, then I might have to allow for that.)
If he thinks starving to death is an easy, painless death, that would not be informed refusal.
If he thinks the people who want to force him to eat are aliens from the planet Zeebob trying to implant a tracking chip in his abdomen, that would not be informed refusal.
If he wants to commit suicide, I’d have to call in a psych consult to see if he had a mental illness. People in extreme situations are not necessarily mentally ill because they would prefer to die. That’s beyond my pay grade and scope of practice to diagnose.
ETA: But if he can tell me, “Yes, I understand that with no food, my body will waste, I will have pain and muscle spasms. I will have diarrhea and bloating as my body begins to digest its own organs. I will feel weak and horrible, and then I will die, probably in a few weeks. I know these things, and I accept them.” That’s about as informed as it gets, and yes, I will honor that.
I will honor that just as I will honor it when you tell me you want to be put on a ventilator and feeding tube and kept alive by machines when you’re about to die, even though I think that’s a horrible idea. Because nursing isn’t about thrusting my decision making rubric on you, it’s about helping you to make your own decisions manifest.
The military is what society as whole decides it is and if the society changes, the military needs to adapt accordingly. The military is under more stringent oversight than ever before and that is absolutely right and proper.
We really, really don’t want that to be the other way round.
Can military personnel refuse an order that can cause them to lose their job?
Interesting division of the world. Those who want him to die and those who want him to live so they can torture him.
Which category do you place yourself in?
Personally, I would reject your premise and offer myself as an example of somebody outside of your categorization. I don’t want these people to die and I don’t want them to be tortured.
And if the decision is based on a faulty premise like yours, then perhaps the decision wasn’t as rational as it appeared. People in extreme situations make poor decisions and killing yourself is an irreversible decision.
You (like myself) are an atheist. Suppose you learned that some of the prisoners on hunger strikes were basing their decision primarily on their religious belief that they would be rewarded in an afterlife because of their willingness to kill themselves. Would you still consider their decision to be rational?
I have not read the entire thread, but I mentioned the story to the SO last night. She is a Registered Nurse, and also an Army combat veteran.
The first thing she said is, ‘The Army is not a democracy.’ But then she said that professional ethics overrule a military order. The American Medical Association and the World Medical Association have said, as posted on the first page of this thread, determined that it is unethical to force-feed a person who refuses the procedure. As a veteran and a nurse, she said it was an interesting dilemma; but she sided with the nurse.
That’s irrelevant to the hypothetical that was postulated; the question was hinged around the specific notion that the act considered ‘torture’ would be lawful.
I daresay that keeping a prisoner from killing himself is in no way comparable to herding people into gas chambers. Force-feeding them is the humane thing to do, and pretty much the exact opposite of executing them.
In general, we don’t allow prisoners to ‘escape’ on the basis that they believe their imprisonment is unfair.
Probably illegal, and I wouldn’t endorse such a tactic if it were, but if it were legal I wouldn’t object to it - letting someone convince themselves they’re going to Hell if they don’t cooperate could be a powerful negotiating tool.
There s nothing I know of that makes this order illegal. If the nurse disagrees, then he can face a court martial and try to convince them otherwise.
Officers don’t “re-up” Sampti, that’s what enlisted do. Officers are technically free to resign their commission at any time, however the resignation has to be accepted by the government. If she is obligated due to her education expenses being paid or partially paid by the government, she will have to repay a portion of that. But yes, she CAN tell the government she’s had enough and resign.
The nurse should be commended and given complete control over the whole base
And promoted to President.
Right, and what you’re missing is we’ve decided the military is a place where the civilian government gets to write all the rules and the military has to follow those rules. The rules are that it’s against military law to refuse to obey an order. For the military to decide on its own to incorporate professional association guidelines into military law that would actually violate the concept of civilian control of the military.
We’re basically saying we think this sole nurse should have the authority to decide (I apologize for using she earlier, I had seen it used in the thread and assumed it was based on direct knowledge of this nurse’s gender) on the rules for himself, which violates all the concepts of oversight and etc you’re talking about. Individual service members cannot exercise their conscience independently, they can only be permitted to do so within the framework society has provided–and that makes clear that they can refuse illegal orders (and defines what those are) and that they cannot refuse legal orders. Nothing about this order was illegal under military law.
There’s no such principle. In this case I believe this soldier is being threatened with losing his job for not obeying the order (that’s what dishonorable discharge is), I think his primary job is with the military. There is actually some Federal law on the books that protects employment rights of service members (i.e., you can’t fire someone for being deployed) that maybe read constructively could protect this nurse’s job if he also has a civilian one. But that’s a WAG.
In general you can 't disobey orders because they might have bad consequences to you, again, that severely undermines what the military is. What if all the Union soldiers facing off on Pickett’s charge decided to flee because obeying orders could have bad consequences to them? There’s implicit in the chain of command the authority to order subordinates into bad situations, including ones in which you know some will most certainly die.
Usually military law is structured to conform to some degree with professional obligations for those types of service members, though. For example a military defense attorney cannot be ordered to break attorney client confidentiality because a superior wants him to, but that’s all specifically laid out in the rules/regulation/laws governing the military. It appears that the prohibition on force feeding, being a recent professional stance in the United States, is not incorporated into the military laws or rules.
Should it be? I don’t know, or even care much. But until it is this person broke the law.
No title less than Emperor would do.
Professional ethics can overrule for an individual on a personal level, but if your SO was actually in the Army she knows that they don’t overrule the UCMJ. The UCMJ and broader military policies and regulations are what decide how these conflicting issues are resolved. From what I’ve read about this case there is nothing in that body of regulation that would allow a “conscience refusal” based on professional ethics. I know the situation for other professions (like military lawyers) is different in that they can’t be ordered to do things that violate fundamental concepts like client confidentiality. Some of that gets into true constitutional issue though (i.e., providing a defendant with an attorney but one who cannot provide them with the rights they normally receive from such an attorney would be murky constitutional grounds, albeit the SCOTUS has generally given the executive branch liberal decision making power on issues like that.)
Here is a previous declaration from 1991, so although there may be some political motivation from Guantanamo in their 2005 actions, it’s in line with their previously statements. Specifically this:
It’s the WMA, but from the article above, they ultimately seem to support a patient’s right to die through a hunger strike even in violation of what the military wants. The guidelines indicate once the prisoner is unconscious, the doctor can resuscitate them once, but only to insure that the patient still wants to continue with what they’re doing.
I’ll pass that on to Sampti if I see him, but yes, you are correct in that regard and I concede my error.
Sorry, Smapti, no offense intended.
Are you sure that’s the original declaration from 1991? It says it incorporates the 1992 and 2006 revisions.
My understanding is that the original declaration (which goes back to 1975) was that medical personnel could not participate or support torture. But the revision that defined forced feeding as a form of torture only goes back to 2005. I’ll admit however I only have this at second hand - I don’t have the various editions of the proclamation as it evolved over the years.
I’m not sure the fact that “it wasn’t always torture” signifies. Would you condemn a psychiatrist who refused to administer electro-shock therapy because it was once a widely accepted practice?
Not what I’m talking about at all. I’m speaking more directly, in that to be a nurse in the military you have to already be a licensed state nurse. If the military commands a military nurse to do something that goes against the precepts of that state nursing association and that state finds and decides to pull the license then that person is no longer qualified to be a military nurse. What happens next?