The ethics of force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike

He had fasted for 25 days.

After four weeks of starvation major organs of the body start to close down and death by heart attack becomes increasingly likely.

I can find no cite for force feeding of competent free adults in the USA in the last fifty years.

Please try to follow the debate.

We moved on to discuss the rights of non imprisoned people.

Try to catch up.

You may have decided to move the goalposts.

The rest of us are still interested in discussing the topic described in the thread title.

Prisoners don’t, and in most cases being suicidal is a sign of mental illness, which allows one to be prevented from killing themselves. As someone who’s struggled with depression for most of my life, this is a very good thing. I don’t want a society that abandons people to starve or kill themselves on the false grounds of “freedom”. There’s really no situation, except for the terminally ill, where there’s a moral case for allowing people to kill themselves, because rational, healthy people don’t do that.

This, by the way, is not theoretical or hypothetical in my case. I was taken to hospital against my will many years ago, and my life (possibly) saved. That you think it was wrong for that to be done says much about you, and it’s not complimentary.

No, you lost that debate, and are now trying to use your cites to debate something else. And not doing too well at that, mainly due to the fact that non-ill, non-imprisoned people who want to kill themselves by starvation are rare to the point of being almost non-existent.

Oh - it becomes more likely, I see. But nowhere near certain given that the average human being takes 45-60 days to starve to death.

I take you wish to move the goal posts from “days from death” to “suffering serious symptoms and risks, but not imminent death”?

I guess you blasted past the part where I noted that declaring someone incompetent is the usual practice prior to imposing treatment on them against their will? You do understand that “competence” is not a binary state and it is possible to be declared so and challenge that ruling? That sometimes there are other agendas at work?

It is not moving the goalposts. People claimed that prisoners should not have the right to refuse treatment because people outside prison would be force fed. This is incorrect. People outside prison who are competent ARE allowed to refuse treatment as my cites clearly show.

As a registered nurse who used to teach medical ethics for mental health nurses, I can inform you that you are misinformed about suicide and mental illness. My wife works in a crisis assessment service as I used to. People are regularly assessed as suicidal but not treatable as they do not exhibit the symptoms of mental illness.

Your views are not in order with current medical practice. You are working on folk medicine and law, not what the case is.

No, you are familiar with the medical ethics in the country you come from/live in. You are clearly NOT familiar with them in the US.

You do understand that different countries have different cultures, customs, and ethics?

I did not ‘lose that debate’. Force feeding is banned for competent persons on mot modern democracies. No one has produced a cite in the last thirty years for any western democracy save the USA and Israel engaging in for force feeding of competent persons.

I have quoted the SCOTUS finding on medical treatment of competent persons outside hospital.

The UK gave up force feeding of prisoners over thirty years ago and it is banned in all modern democratic states but the USA and Israel. It is universally seen outside those jurisdictions as inhumane and torture.

This thread is not about competent persons. It’s about prisoners, and has expanded to the treatment of the mentally ill.

If you, as a mental health nurse, allowed someone to commit suicide rather than treat them, shame on you. You were a disgrace to your profession, and I’m extremely glad you were never in charge of my treatment. If someone has attempted suicide, and comes to hospital against their will, you don’t wait for a fucking psychiatric evaluation before saving their life! If the law or your ethics committee say otherwise they are terribly, disgustingly, inhumanly wrong.

But you continue to insist that if your country does it one way and the United States and Israel does it a different way then the United States and Israel are wrong. The fact that your country is perfect isn’t as obvious to the rest of us as it is to you.

It’s the same thing with your cites. You quote people and organizations that agree with you - those people and organizations are right. And you dismiss the people and organizations you disagree with - those people and organizations are wrong.

You haven’t even bother to argue your position. You’ve just told us what your position is and you seem to feel that settled the issue. Apparently once the world has been informed what Pjen believes, there’s no longer any other valid beliefs.

So it’s true you haven’t lost the debate. But only on the technicality that you haven’t participated in the debate. You’ve simply ignored anything anyone else has said and kept repeating yourself.

That wasn’t a finding with legal standing, it was commentary on a ruling regarding a person medically incompetent. I guess you don’t comprehend the difference. Is this a language problem or a thinking problem?

It is your problem. SCOTUS stated clearly that it is a tenet of the law that

1/ competent people have the right to refuse treatment AND
2/ food and water are treatment.

I have not said that they are wrong BECAUSE every other democratic advanced country disagrees with them.

I have pointed out that they disagree with most of the rest of the countries in the democratic world, and they cannot claim that their take is the majority one for such states, who they would seek to associate with. The only other states that engage in such behaviours are tyrannies and other oppressive states.

Aside from that I, personally, agree with the view held by most of the world’s democratic states.

The same argument that exposes the USA as one of the very few such democratic states who allow judicial killing.

There are two parallel arguments- the USA shares its practices with regimes with doubtful human rights records rather tan advanced industrialised democratic states.

Additionally, I concur with those latter states.

So, you are against a quick, easy execution but fine with allowing people to starve themselves to death or have their mental illnesses that lead them to suicide untreated? I can’t even fathom the thought processes that could lead to that, and sadly instead of sharing them you just keep citing that other people think the way you do.

My professional responsibilities and legal requirements mean that if a competent person has decided to attempt suicide, intervention would be assault. So long a it remains uncertain whether or not they are competent of course emergency first aid and medical attention should be provided. But should a person have been assessed as suicidal but not mentally ill, then intervention would be unlawful and the practitioner would be at risk of an accusation of assault.

It is exactly the same as a Jehovah’s witness refusing a blood transfusion or a spiritualist refusing modern medical intervention, or the ordinary person refusing chemotherapy or radiotherapy. So long as they are competent and fully informed, then any forcible treatment would be assault.

Once again it is your humble opinion, not the law of the land.

No. I am against all forms of judicial killing, but wish to respect individual human rights.

This is the viewpoint of the vast majority of health care professionals among whom there is little support for judicial killing, but a shared awareness of the absolute need for consent to treatment.

There’s nothing fucking humble about my opinion that it’s the duty of a medical professional to treat a mentally ill, suicidal person. It’s monstrous that you disagree with that.

And don’t give me the bullshit about “suicidal but not mentally ill”. Outside of terminally ill people, it doesn’t happen.

How many suffering people have you left to die because of your reprehensible “ethics”?