The article is here, and the following highlights are essential to understanding the story. Readers familiar with Foucault's work will recognize the toxic combination produced by prison discipline and "biopower" in which the management of life steps to the fore as a target of power-knowledge dispositifs.
[Force-feeding] has been prohibited since 1975 by the Declaration of Tokyo of the World Medical Association provided the prisoner is "capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment....
[The hunger strike by prisoners at California's Pelican Bay institution is in protest of practices whereby] prisoners in Security Housing Units ("the SHUs") spend 23 hours a day confined in isolation in 6-by-10-foot concrete, windowless, soundproof, cells with artificial lighting and one hour in a concrete exercise yard, ruled by judges to be a form of torture...
[Prisoners have signed DNR orders, which is] a legal order written so that people respect wishes to not undergo CPR or advanced cardiac life support if their heart were to stop or they were to stop breathing. This request is usually made by the patient or health care power of attorney and allows medical teams taking care of them to respect their wishes.
California Department of Corrections secretary, Matthew Cate, has reported that he will intervene "to save those inmates’ lives."...
[Responding to the use force-feeding to break a hunger strike at Guantanamo] In March 2006, 250 doctors from seven Western countries published their open letter in the medical journal, The Lancet, warning that participation of any doctor in force-feeding is contrary to World Medical Association rules.
See here for "ten ways to support the Pelican Bay prisoner hunger strike."
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