Don't treat shackled patients

And keep trying to understand what the Nuremberg trials taught us

Last week Britain was shocked by the report of a young man who was shackled to a bed until two hours before he died of stomach cancer. He was shackled because he was a prisoner. Last year doctors and others had to protest about women prisoners being forced to give birth while shackled.1 Understandably doctors unused to treating prisoners in NHS hospitals are not sure about “the rules.” But they should be. Doctors should simply refuse to treat patients who are shackled, and doctors' organisations should support them without quibble. This is the state making doctors participate in unethical acts in the way that was described in the BMJ's December 7 issue marking the 50th anniversary of the Nuremberg doctors' trials.