Force-feeding

The BBC once again draws attention to the force-feeding of hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay, highlighting the claim by a recently released detainee that ”the force-feeding of hunger strikers amounts to torture”.

Epluribus Media covered the same ground in more detail last week, looking at some of the historical background on the force-feeding of prisoners, including the “Cat and Mouse” act the British authorities used against the suffragettes.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have participated in the force-feeding of someone who persistently refused to eat. The manner of feeding was precisely the same as that used at Guantanamo. Am I a torturer? You be the judge.


My “victim” was a 17 year-old female anorexic. Two nurses helped me to forcibly restrain her, while another nurse forced the plastic feeding tube up her nose and down the back of her throat. By the end of the procedure, the patient was bleeding as a result of the passage of the tube, had vomited up most of the nutritional fluid and was bruised by the restraint. She was also, understandably, severely distressed. The nurse in charge stood back, and measured the liquid left in the jug: “She hasn’t had enough.” So we did it all again.
Some people might wish to absolve me of responsibility for my part in this act. They might say that I was only doing my job and point out that I was following accepted clinical guidelines. Both are true: force-feeding of this kind is common in British hospitals and prisons (remember Ian Brady). But neither of these things justifies the act itself or my participation therein.

Others might seek to justify the procedure by reference to the duties required of the institution rather than those of the individuals involved: the patient’s right to refuse food was overridden because the hospital had a duty to keep her alive. But I can’t see it that way.

I took part because I was assured (and truly believed) that the patient was no longer in control of her actions due to an underlying abnormal pathology AND that if she were “well” she would not have wanted to take her own life AND that if she wasn’t force-fed in this manner, her life would soon be in danger.

At least, that’s how I’ve always justified it to myself. But, of course, there’s a postscript – shortly after that procedure, the patient absconded from the hospital. She was later found dead. I have always wondered if she fled to avoid a repetition of the terrible ordeal she’d experienced whilst in our “care”.

Did we do the right thing?

I still don't have an answer to that question, and I was never required to nurse another anorexic, but I continue to regard the force-feeding of people who refuse food for pathological reasons to be justifiable, although I accept that it involves a categorical denial of the rights of the individual.

Back to Guantanamo: Force-feeding by means of a nasal tube is a brutal procedure, no matter whether it’s done in a US detention facility or a British hospital. The act itself is an abuse of the individual but its use is sometimes necessary to preserve life.

Is the refusal of food by some of the Guantanamo detainees due to an underlying abnormal pathology? If individuals are going on hunger strike in desperation at their confinement then I would argue that it is.

Is it a human rights abuse? I don’t think so. Imprisonment necessarily involves the suspension of many of the rights an individual would otherwise freely enjoy. The Guantanamo detainees are being refused the right to commit suicide. There’s nothing unusual in that, it’s not a right that prisoners normally enjoy and, to my mind, that’s as it should be.

I accept that nasal feeding is a violent procedure but the fact that it is being used at Guantanamo reflects accepted clinical practice (both in the UK and abroad) and not the desire of American personnel to use archaic medical procedures to torture those in their care.

One last thought – and I’m not trying to deflect criticisms of the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo when I say this - sometimes the BBC seems completely unaware of what goes on in British prisons. I guess it’s easy to ignore.