Hunger Strikes, Force-feeding, and Physicians' Responsibilities
- Sondra S. Crosby, MD;
- Caroline M. Apovian, MD;
- Michael A. Grodin, MD
- Author Affiliations: Departments of Medicine (Drs Crosby and Apovian) and Psychiatry (Dr Grodin), Boston University School of Medicine, and Department of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health (Drs Crosby and Grodin), Boston, Massachusetts.
- Corresponding Author: Sondra S. Crosby, MD, Section of General Internal Medicine ACC-5, Boston Medical Center, 850 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118 (scrosby{at}bu.edu).
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
Prison hunger strikes present clinical, ethical, legal, and human rights challenges to physicians who care for hunger strikers. Controversy continues over the care of prisoners who are hunger striking at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.1 The World Medical Association (WMA) has updated the Declaration of Malta with guidelines on care of hunger strikers,2 and recent court opinions in the United States and Europe have attempted to define the obligations of physicians caring for hunger strikers in prison settings.3 This Commentary describes the medical aspects of starvation and examines the ethical, legal, and human rights dimensions of decision making by health care professionals caring for imprisoned patients who are hunger striking.
Prisoner Hunger Strikes
A hunger strike, by definition, is food refusal used as a form of protest or demand. Hunger strikes occur in various settings, but they result in important clinical and ethical dilemmas for health care …
