{"title":"Using Ethics Committees to Justify Force-Feeding Political Prisoners in Israel.","authors":"Zohar Lederman, Ryan Essex","doi":"","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Thousands of Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli prisons without trial. For some of them, engaging in hunger strikes is the last resort in opposing unlawful detention and inhumane prison conditions. While mainstream bioethics deliberation, reasonable arguments, and international legal and medical professional declarations prohibit force-feeding, local ethical deliberations, professional medical guidelines, and legislation allow the use of medical judgment and clinical ethics committees to force-feed these prisoners. Until now, Israeli physicians have refused to do so, but this may change in the future. The international medical and bioethics communities need to stand behind these medical professionals, as well as prisoners. Clinical ethics committees in Israel must choose whether they serve the interests of these prisoner-patients and perhaps their political or human rights agenda, or whether they are subservient to an unjust, oppressive regime.</p>","PeriodicalId":46953,"journal":{"name":"Health and Human Rights","volume":"25 2","pages":"53-65"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10733766/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Health and Human Rights","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Thousands of Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli prisons without trial. For some of them, engaging in hunger strikes is the last resort in opposing unlawful detention and inhumane prison conditions. While mainstream bioethics deliberation, reasonable arguments, and international legal and medical professional declarations prohibit force-feeding, local ethical deliberations, professional medical guidelines, and legislation allow the use of medical judgment and clinical ethics committees to force-feed these prisoners. Until now, Israeli physicians have refused to do so, but this may change in the future. The international medical and bioethics communities need to stand behind these medical professionals, as well as prisoners. Clinical ethics committees in Israel must choose whether they serve the interests of these prisoner-patients and perhaps their political or human rights agenda, or whether they are subservient to an unjust, oppressive regime.
期刊介绍:
Health and Human Rights began publication in 1994 under the editorship of Jonathan Mann, who was succeeded in 1997 by Sofia Gruskin. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners In Health, assumed the editorship in 2007. After more than a decade as a leading forum of debate on global health and rights concerns, Health and Human Rights made a significant new transition to an online, open access publication with Volume 10, Issue Number 1, in the summer of 2008. While continuing the journal’s print-only tradition of critical scholarship, Health and Human Rights, now available as both print and online text, provides an inclusive forum for action-oriented dialogue among human rights practitioners.