The Army discharges all its nurses and hires private contractors instead. 
That’s a good question. They’ve been force feeding Guantanamo detainees for some time now, is this the first case in which a registered nurse (as opposed to some prison guard or orderly type) has been doing the feeding? I wouldn’t be surprised if State nursing organizations have declined to act on somethinf that happens in another country and under the umbrella of military law. Likely they wouldn’t want the legal battle.
The “They’ve” in your second sentence-We don’t know how many are doctors, how many are nurses and how many are orderlies, do we? It may be the this nurse may not be the rare one that objects, but may be the rare one that got given those particular orders-I don’t think we know just yet, do we?
Don’t clergy have ethics, too?
That’s why I asked the question. If it were expected that nurses put aside their professional nursing ethics for the good of the military, would we not expect the same in the case of military chaplains?
If not, why not?
Because it was a cool story. You didn’t think you were making a debate argument worth responding to, did you?
Because I think medical professionals have, or should have, an obligation to keep their patients alive. And I think that if somebody is imprisoned, the state has a special obligation to take care of them. If they’re being tortured, it needs to stop; if they’re being held illegally, they need to be let go, but letting them commit suicide isn’t an acceptable alternative.
I could only find one legal ruling in the US, and it would appear that force feeding of prisoners in NOT illegal.
Theresa C. LANTZ, Commissioner, Department of Correction v. William B. COLEMAN.
Not really on point. In fact, there wasn’t any argument on the issue raised here.
Why not? A major argument seems to be that this procedure is torture. THis ruling clearly states it’s not. Got one from a US court saying it is?
It goes back to my earlier suggestion that this decision may have been made for political rather than medical reasons.
Torture really only means one, arguably two things as far as the military is concerned.
If U.S. law says it is torture, then it is torture. Where it could be two, is if a treaty we are signatory to says a thing is torture, then it is torture. But that’s via virtue of treaties actually being incorporated into U.S. law, so it goes back to what the law says.
I’m not aware of any treaty we’ve signed that says force feeding is torture, or any statute that governs the military that says it is not to be done because it is torture. We’ve heard I believe people who have occupational knowledge of prison medical treatment say it happens in civilian prisons as well.
That’s the end all be all to me in terms of whether an order is lawful or not. Moral and lawful aren’t the same thing, and the actual legal system has to be concerned with the lawful part.
Morally, I’ve honestly not given force feeding a lot of thought. I’m not sure I care one way or the other. But I don’t believe the AMA or the equivalent nursing association have particular moral weight over and above anyone else.
The problem is that I suspect these points aren’t stressed too much by the recruiters. I somehow doubt they first present the potential recruits with a slideshow about the horrors of war or make sure they clearly understand that they might have to do things they’ll find morally repugnant, and so on…
IMO enlisting in the army is sold on false pretenses, which I find extremely problematic (and I’m nice, here) and as the result the engagements kids take when they join isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. In consequence, I’m extremely likely to support those soldiers who have second thoughts about what is ordered to them.
I retired from an over twenty year career in the Army (I wasn’t enlisted, though), and any reasonable reading of the history of armies since time immemorial plus my own personal experience will reveal that a lot of young men sign up out of ignorance.
I think we do a decent job setting them up to succeed in life once they’re out, especially in terms of on the job training while in service and robust assistance getting traditional education afterward, but yeah I mean I don’t see how nation’s can field armies if we try to have our recruiters tell young guys that lots of aspects of being in the military really suck. That’s not good sales practice.
Good sales practice in terms of good sales practice, rather than good sales practice, that is.
Just to be clear this wasn’t an impressionable young kid. It was an 18 yr veteran nearing eligibility to retire. As a nurse that means an officer. An officer can submit their resignation request at any time. It’s sometimes accepted even if they have a service obligation remaining. This ethical dilemma would probably be a good justification for a release from the obligation. Even for enlisted the US Army’s way of dealing with someone who deserts or simply refuses to deploy for most of the current campaigns is to discharge them without any judicial proceedings or punishment. The discharge is overwhelmingly characterized as General not Dishonorable. In the current volunteer force they want people that want to be there and accept the values and obligations of the profession. If you can’t or won’t, they don’t want you.
You agree with the typical US military practice at this time It appears the Navy is also supporting this nurses ability to choose the medical profession over the profession of arms. The Navy is following an administrative process to discharge them; this is not a court martial for disobeying a lawful order. “Go be a nurse. You just can’t be a Navy nurse.”
The body of US law - like your cite - is almost unanimous in holding that prison authorities can forcefeed prisoners on hunger strikes (for example, In re Sanchez, 577 F.Supp. 7; Department of Public Welfare v. Kallinger, 134 Pa.Cmwlth. 415; or, McNabb v. Department of Corrections, 163 Wash.2d 393.) However, that’s not relevant at all.
Whether it’s torture is only relevant to the underlying philosophical debate. The AMA says it’s impermissible.
First, as I pointed out, the parties in the OP’s case are not a prison authority and an inmate. They’re the military and a medical provider. Second, and perhaps most importantly, the reason prisons can forcefeed prisoners is because the Constitution grants them lesser protections by the nature of their convictions. Nobody at Guantanamo has been convicted of anything, so the body of prison law only outlines the minimum possible threshold for those prisoners’ constitutional rights.
Keep licenses, lose jobs if they were ordered to do anything and refused.
I think the issue here is the manner in which the nurse loses his job. A dishonorable discharge seems like a punishment.