The law, at least to this point, is clear: The military’s practice of force-feeding Guantanamo Bay prisoners on hunger strikes, though , passes constitutional muster, according to a recent court decision.
However, the insistence of the Defense Department in coercing a Navy medical officer to participate in the practice — and pursuing punishment against the officer for his refusal — is not so clear-cut.
Why is the department so set on sanctioning the nurse, an 18-year Navy veteran, for having objections to something that poses obvious ethical questions?
Why couldn’t the Navy have reassigned the officer instead of bringing him before a formal Board of Inquiry?
No doubt the Navy felt the need to preserve military discipline, but this was not a run-of-the-mill order for a nurse. Force-feedings of prisoners present a very difficult dilemma for any medical professional.
The American Medical Association has called force-feeding a violation of “core ethical values of the medical profession,” saying that “every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention,” including life-sustaining measures, according to a in The New York Times.
The American Nurses Association cited “the ethical right of a professional nurse to make an independent judgment about whether he or she should participate in this or any other such activity.”
Those associations raise serious questions about the procedures a medical professional should be required to engage in. Being in the military adds another wrinkle, to be sure, but medical workers shouldn’t have to compromise their professional ethics whether they are in or out of service.
There should be some way to allow even a Navy nurse the option of choosing whether to participate in something as morally problematic as force-feeding a prisoner.
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