Guantanamo and Other Cases of Enforced Medical Treatment

After a very productive period as an Erasmus Mundus Fellow at the Center for Human Bioethics at Monash University, in October 2013 Dr. Mirko Garasic joined the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a Golda Meir Postdoctoral Fellow. Shortly after his arrival, Dr. Garasic was also offered a position as Research Assistant for a project assessing medical tourism and global justice. He is currently working on a number of bioethical and biopolitical projects focused on human enhancement, male circumcision, hunger strikes, and neuroethics. Since the beginning of his Ph.D., Dr. Garasic has worked in four continents and published in five: in 2009, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Ethox Centre at the University of Oxford, while in 2010 he spent a semester at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. During his time in India, he also collaborated with the Center for the Study of Ethics and Rights. In the following academic year, he was a Yale University and Hastings Center Visiting Scholar thanks to a Fulbright Scholarship. He participated in numerous international conferences and he has received various awards. He is a member of the Italian Society of Analytic Philosophy and the International Research Network on Religion and Democracy. Dr. Garasic has a number of forthcoming publications and presentations in 2014 and he has recently been invited to write a chapter for the Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television, scheduled to be published in the summer of 2015. Among other journals, his work has recently appeared in the American Journal of Bioethics, in the Hastings Center Report and in Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy.

• Preface Chapter 1 The concepts of Autonomy, Competence, Dignity and Biopolitics Introduction 1.1.Autonomy 1.2.Competence 1.3.Dignity 1.4.Biopolitics Conclusion Chapter 2 Enforcing medical treatment to keep a person alive: the problematic case of Anorexia Nervosa Introduction 2.1.Anorexia Nervosa: an insight to a contemporary drama 2.2. The conceptualization of Anorexia Nervosa by medicine, the law and the sufferers 2.3. The tension between competence and mental illness in anorexics 2.4. Are we to enforce medical treatment in cases of Anorexia Nervosa? 2.5. The biopolitical reasoning for keeping anorexics alive Conclusion Chapter 3 Enforcing Medical Treatment to kill: the case of Charles Laverne Singleton 2 3.3. Neuroscience, enforced treatments and other perspectives 3.4. Punishment, insanity and responsibility 3.4.a The idea of punishment 3.4.b The evolution of the role of insanity in law 3.4.c A retributivist argument 3.5. Right to treatment or duty to be treated? 4.6. A further option Conclusion Chapter 4 Hunger strikes and other controversial cases Introduction 4.1.The Dax’s case 4.2. Issues related to keeping one’s alive against his will 4.3. Allowing to die: the case of Sami Mbarka Ben Garci 4.4. Can we consider reliable the competence of an hunger striker? 4.5. Further hunger strike cases Conclusion Chapter 5 Guantanamo and its specific biopolitical charge Introduction 5.1. Declaration of Malta on hunger strikes 5.2. Are hunger strikes in Guantanamo bay different from others? 5.3. The role of doctors and their dual loyalty 5.4. Arguments supporting the use of naso-gastric treatment in Guantanamo 5.5. Arguments condemning the use naso-gastric treatment in Guantanamo 5.6. Hyppocratic oath or political agenda? A biopolitical analysis of the issue Conclusion