Galveston County Daily News, May 22, 2007
By Howard Brody
The press reported April 10 that prisoners in a new unit at Guantanamo Bay were mounting a hunger strike to protest conditions. The U.S. military responded that the strike was losing ground and that, at the time, 13 of the prisoners were being force-fed. This is just the latest example of unethical behavior by military medical personnel since Sept. 11, 2001. The fact that there has not been a huge protest among both U.S. physicians and the American public is a source of major international embarrassment for the United States. It is a clear-cut violation of international medical ethics to force-feed hunger-striking prisoners. The American Medical Association is a signatory to the world codes of medical ethics that condemn this practice. It is also a gross violation of international medical ethics for physicians to participate in or observe torture or degrading treatment of prisoners and not report it to authorities. Yet military medical personnel continue to be engaged in planning and carrying out types of interrogation that the international community labels as humiliating and degrading, as well as health-threatening.