Guantanamo Hunger Strikers Must Receive Independent Medical Advice, Doctors Urge Obama

Date: Jun-19-2013Hunger strikers currently detained in Guantánamo Bay should receive independent medical advice, 153 doctors told President Barack Obama in an open letter published today in The Lancet.

An increasing number of doctors and healthcare professionals are expressing concern and alarm that the hunger strikers are not receiving a proper or humane standard of medical care by military doctors. There are estimated to be over 100 hunger strikers in Guantánamo Bay.

A letter signed by thirteen hunger strikers to their military doctor was published in The Guardian on May 31st, 2013. They asked for access to independent medical advice and examination.

Below are two paragraphs from the hunger strikers to their military physician in the letter published in The Guardian:

"I am respectfully requesting that independent medical professionals be allowed into Guantanamo to treat me, and that they be given full access to my medical records, in order to determine the best treatment for me.

You claim to be acting according to your duties as a physician to save my life. This is against my expressed wish. As you should know, I am competent to make my own decisions about medical treatment. When I try to refuse treatments you offer; you force them upon me, sometimes violently. For those reasons, you are in violation of the ethics of your profession, as the American Medical Association and World Medical Association have made clear."

The prisoners claim they cannot trust military doctors who engage in painful and degrading force-feeding.

The open letter to President Obama, signed by 153 doctors, urge him to look at this matter, and to provide access to independent examination and advice as a matter of urgency.

The authors of the open letter to The President wrote:

"Without trust, safe and acceptable medical care of mentally competent patients is impossible. Since the detainees do not trust their military doctors, they are unlikely to comply with current medical advice. That makes it imperative for them to have access to independent medical examination and advice, as they ask, and as required by the UN and World Medical Association.

We endorse their request, and are prepared to visit them under appropriate conditions, to assist in their recovery and release, and certify when we are confident it is medically safe for them to fly," say the signatories. "If you keep your word (given over 4 years ago), and arrange release of detainees, they will need to become fit to fly before they can be returned to wherever you order your forces to send them."

The 153 signatories, who declare that they have no conflict of interest, pointed out that the orders the military physicians receive are ultimately the President's as Commander-in-Chief.

Written by Christian Nordqvist

Copyright: Medical News Today

Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today
Courtesy: Medical News Today Note: Any medical information available in this news section is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional.