Throw-away punchlines should sometimes just be thrown away
In Friday's OpinionJournal Best of the Web Today, James Taranto included a story entitled "Docs for Starvation", highlighting this news item:
"More than 260 doctors yesterday called on the American authorities at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to allow detainees to starve themselves to death," reports the Daily Telegraph of London. We guess that explains hospital food, but if the docs want the prisoners to die, aren't there quicker and more humane ways of accomplishing it?
Now, I'm clearly a fan of snark, evidenced, inter alia, by the fact that I read and enjoy Best of the Web each weekday that Taranto's not on vacation.
So I read it and chuckled a bit, then moved on. Later, however, I got a link to a story in The Independent that more fully described things, and was somewhat embarrassed by my earlier chuckling. Why I'm telling you this is beyond me, because none of you were there when I was chuckling, nor was anyone else, but mild guilt has strange effects. Among other things, the Indy article points out that:
More than 250 medical experts are launching a protest today against the practice - which involves strapping inmates to "restraint chairs" and pushing tubes into the stomach through the nose. They say it breaches the right of prisoners to refuse treatment....
Since August they have been routinely force-fed, an excruciatingly painful practice that causes bleeding and nausea. The doctors say: "Fundamental to doctors' responsibilities in attending a hunger striker is the recognition that prisoners have a right to refuse treatment.
"The UK Government has respected this right even under very difficult circumstances and allowed Irish hunger strikers to die. Physicians do not have to agree with the prisoner, but they must respect their informed decision." The World Medical Association has prohibited force-feeding and the American Medical Association backed the WMA's declaration.
(ellipses mine)
Damn, I said to myself, the docs have a point. Contrary to Mr. Taranto's punchline, it's not the doctors who want people to die - it's the people who themselves want to die. All of which, in retrospect, is quite obvious, so shame on me.
I'm not of a mind with all other sentiments reported in the article, such as the UN's demands that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp be closed down, at least not that it should be closed down because of the force feeding. But I don't have trouble agreeing with them when they say that "...treatment such as force-feeding and prolonged solitary confinement could amount to torture."
I can even understand why the military command at Camp X-Ray would think force feeding was preferable to body bags filled with dead detainees. Understanding, however, isn't the same as agreement, and I think that if the detainees prefer to shuffle off their mortal coils rather than to remain in detention, that's their right, and that right shouldn't be infringed.
And no, I don't think that because the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist (even though this is self-evident). In fact I don't even think that everyone at Camp X-Ray is a terrorist, or even deserves necessarily to be (or still be) detained. I'm comfortable that some of them deserve it, and I only wish the military could be a bit more crisp about sorting all that out, without releasing folks who will do harm after being freed, and without returning inmates to home countries in circumstances in which they'd be in personal danger. Both types of detainees exist, along with the odd innocent, and not everything at Camp X-Ray is wrong - perhaps most things at Camp X-Ray aren't wrong.
But force-feeding prisoners who'd prefer to let it all end naturally seems clearly wrong.
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Perhaps they feel that dead
Perhaps they feel that dead detainees would be more likely to get certain people worked up into a spit lather than force-feeding them?
Say a guard spotted an inmate hanging themself in one of the cells. Should they cut them down? That's just suicide prevention, right?
How is force feeding any different, other than the method of suicide being a lot slower?
If you're pro-suicide and pro-euthenasia then I can see how you'd be anti-forced-feeding but otherwise it doesn't make any sense to me.
Nicholas:
Nicholas:
Thanks for your comment, and you bring up some good points. I'm neither pro-suicide nor pro-euthanasia, I'm simply anti-interference in cases where the subject is an adult, the interference is physically intrusive and potentially damaging, and the alternative to interference isn't harmful to anyone but the subject.
The doctors' important contention, aside from pointing out that it's arguably cruel to force feed, is that it's unethical for a doctor to ignore the wishes of a person under his or her care. On the face of it, they're "just" saying that doctors can't ethically participate in these force feedings. That's hard to argue with, I think.
Dead detainees are bad PR, no matter how you slice it. The largest difference that occurs to me between a hanging suicide and a starvation suicide is that the latter is a decision one gets to revisit many times before its ultimate success, thus making it a more clearly intentional, with intention here used to mean "No, I swear - I REALLY meant to do this".
There's nothing remotely interpretable as cruelty when simply stopping someone from hanging himself. Affirmatively ramming a tube into someone's nostril is hard to look at quite as benignly.
For the record, if the detainees wanted to commit suicide by hanging rather than starvation, I'd suggest that they be treated almost like a non-incarcerated civilian - their intent should be ascertained, and they should be offered assistance in dealing with the situation that's got them suicidal. In this case, that might include ensuring that there's really a valid basis, defensible to someone outside Camp X-Ray, for their continued incarceration.
I presume that some small fraction of the detainees actually don't belong there, and that some of those who don't could lapse into hopelessness. That's no reason either to allow them to become suicidal or to let them all go, however, and is no argument against the existence of Camp X-Ray. Just because someone would rather be dead than incarcerated doesn't mean they're no threat to society.
After taking the proper steps, however, if they still wanted to hang instead of starve themselves, I'd let them. But I'd suggest starvation - it's a path, though not a final outcome, that's more easily reversed.
Hi.
Hi.
A while ago I wrote a long reply to your reply. Then I ditched it. I was going around in logical circles.
I'm sorry if I appeared to be riciculing you or otherwise obnoxious with my comment. I wasn't trying to. I do see a very slim moral distinction between allowing someone to hang themself and allowing them to starve themself to death. I respect your right to find that distinction significant and I understand how that might be the case. However, I also understand the opposing point of view and don't feel it's necessarily invalid either.
I guess it's a personal decision which you think is the correct viewpoint. Anyway, thanks for your response and I'm sorry if I seemed rude!
Rude? Hardly, and no apology
Rude? Hardly, and no apology is required. I didn't feel ridiculed, I felt that someone disagreed with me, which, just between you and I, has happened in the past a time or two, so I'm used to it.
In my perfect world, we'd find ways to avoid people getting painted into that final corner of desperation where they felt a need to end it all. Once they make the choice, however, we have to treat them pretty much as we'd treat an insane person, because they're clearly getting ready to make a one-time decision.
And the distinction I see between being allowed to hang oneself and to starve oneself isn't a moral one - it's purely temporal, in that in the second case, they've got lots of chances to change their minds, and to become more sane.
That's purely an operational consideration, however, and seems the most humane under most circumstances. But if the argument were phrased with the clear understanding that, dammit, they're going to get their justice, whether they want it or not (with full recognition that they might be freed as innocents, by the way), then I can definitely see why a benevolent jailer would ensure that they didn't cheat themselves of justice by preventing them taking their lives, by any means necessary including force-feeding.
Your challenge to my view on the matter is completely valid. But you already knew that.