World Medical Association

The World Medical Association enters the account through a landmark ethical judgment on force-feeding: after Dolours and Marian Price’s hunger strike, it declared the practice unethical. The book links that decision to a change in British prison policy, with consequences that reached beyond the sisters’ own ordeal.

Declaration on Force-Feeding

Not long after the Price sisters concluded their strike, the World Medical Association issued its declaration. Its finding addressed a practice Dolours Price had experienced directly: in Brixton Prison, officials restrained her and pushed a tube down her throat to administer food while she was refusing it. The declaration placed that coercive medical intervention under an explicit ethical prohibition.

Change in British Prison Policy

The account connects the declaration to a decision to stop force-feeding hunger strikers in the United Kingdom. Roy Jenkins announced that hunger strikers in British prisons would no longer be subjected to the practice. The declaration and the policy shift are presented together, marking a change from physically keeping a striker alive by force to allowing the hunger strike to proceed without that intervention.

Unintended Consequences

The policy change acquired a grave later significance. Seven years after the Price sisters’ strike, ten hunger strikers died; Dolours Price later reflected that the end of force-feeding had helped create the circumstances in which they could starve to death. She wondered whether her own victory in 1974 had made her, in some way, responsible. The World Medical Association’s ethical judgment is thus situated in the narrative not only as a limit on coercive treatment, but also within the chain of consequences that Price came to associate with the later deaths.