Walter Ruiz, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi's lawyer and a former Navy commander, told the court that Hawsawi's treatment needs stem from injuries he sustained under U.S.-sponsored torture. Ruiz wants to interview his client's doctors to learn more about the "ongoing bleeding" and "colorectal issues that stem from his time in captivity...."

The philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that "whoever wills the end, wills the means." However, even those who initially support a plan to force treatment on a young patient are morally bound to question the means required to do so.

When a child is hungry, she will not necessarily eat.

Carol Jumper was diagnosed with cancer in August of this year and after telling her employer of 12 years, she received this letter terminating her position without pay.

Most of us have fantasized about living in the past -- seventeenth-century France, Rome of the emperors, sailing with Viking explorers. But there is an aspect of the past that can be guaranteed to send us scurrying back to the reassuring present -- health and medicine.