In hospitals all over the world, these same tubes are used to feed patients who are unable to eat. It's very common. I've put in hundreds. I've had one put into me. It's uncomfortable while going though the back of your throat and down your esophagus, but tolerable once it's in. Still the process is not something I would wish on anyone, especially twice every day. Sometimes the tube goes down the person's airway instead of their esophagus, which can be dangerous. Sometimes it goes into their nose and comes out their mouth, which, in my experience, is disconcerting to the person.

Nasogastric tubes are an appropriate medical intervention for a consenting patient, or for someone whose power of attorney consents on their behalf. It can also be an appropriate measure when a patient is in an altered mental state, prone to self-harm, where the tube might be a temporizing measure to restore them to good mental and physical health. Once in good health, the person could refuse further use of the tube.

Or, could they? Does refusing to eat, in itself, constitute psychopathology -- suicidality?

That is the question at Guantánamo. So, let's step back on the idea of force-feeding for a minute.

Sometimes people force-feed animals benevolently.

Other times, we force-feed animals non-benevolently to make delicious foie gras. People have been doing this to birds for at least 5,000 years.

That provokes responses like this staged protest in London, though.

Force-feeding ducks prompts moral outrage. Force-feeding humans against their will: next-level outrage? It can be medically justified, though, if it is considered suicide prevention. Are 100 detainees suicidal? Even if suicidality is defined as any instance where someone would rather die than endure their current circumstances, when it happens simultaneously in 100 people, it is difficult to diagnose them all as being of mentally ill.

Brian Mishara, Director of the Center for Research and Intervention on Suicide and Euthanasia in the Psychology Department at the University of Quebec, put it succinctly in The New York Times: "In the case of Guantánamo, intervening to save or prolong a person's life without trying to change the person's reasons for wanting to die cannot be considered suicide prevention. Suicide prevention would involve intervening to change the person's desire to die (despite his circumstances) or changing the situation that he feels is intolerable. From the news reports I have seen, those steps are both absent, and therefore the military's force-feeding does not constitute suicide prevention."