Shimkus, Albert - short clip - HungerStrikesintheEarlyDays
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| - | As we received the detainee | 0:00 |
| remember we did a complete physical | 0:02 | |
| which included height and weight. | 0:03 | |
| So height weight ratio is one of the ways | 0:05 | |
| that you look at the physiological well-being | 0:07 | |
| of individual on a hunger strike. | 0:10 | |
| So we had a baseline when hunger strikes begin. | 0:11 | |
| And so as the hunter strikes were part of the environment | 0:14 | |
| we used that baseline to determine | 0:21 | |
| whether this patient was in extremis. | 0:23 | |
| Hunger strike is different than a water strike. | 0:32 | |
| So you can survive without food for a period of time | 0:35 | |
| surviving without water is very different. | 0:37 | |
| And so General Edward rightly so was very concerned | 0:39 | |
| about the physiological wellbeing of the hunger strikers. | 0:44 | |
| So when we found an individual who would exhibit symptoms | 0:46 | |
| of being very, very significantly dehydrated for example, | 0:51 | |
| we would take him out of the environment | 0:59 | |
| in which he was striking and bring him | 1:02 | |
| to the detention hospital. | 1:04 | |
| And we found that at least initially | 1:07 | |
| in the hunger striking environment | 1:11 | |
| they would willingly take oral fluids | 1:13 | |
| once they are out of their hunger striking environment | 1:18 | |
| they would willingly take oral fluids. | 1:19 | |
| Interviewer | In the clinic or? | 1:22 |
| - | In the clinic outside of the purview of their peers. | 1:23 |
| And on the other hand if we found someone really in extremis | 1:27 | |
| they would also accept IV rehydration | 1:33 | |
| outside of their peers. | 1:38 | |
| And so we would bring them in, rehydrate them | 1:39 | |
| and then they would go back to the prison population. | 1:42 | |
| In the context of of what we were doing, | 1:46 | |
| within the US prison system | 1:50 | |
| interventions like that are acceptable. | 1:53 | |
| My time ended in August 2nd, 2003. | 1:54 | |
| So we did not have a detainee ever refuse | 1:59 | |
| they be either rehydrated by oral hydration | 2:05 | |
| or IV rehydration. | 2:08 |
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