Food Refusal, Anorexia and Soft Paternalism: What's at Stake?

Anorexia nervosa, or restrictive anorexia, is one of a collection of disorders that includes bulimia and binging and purging syndromes. Because it is common (it is the second most common disorder diagnosed in adolescent girls, for example); hard to treat; and sometimes fatal, anorexia raises urgent ethical and societal concerns. When adequate and perhaps lifesaving nutrition is refused by the patient, do others have a right or even a duty to impose it through feeding tube or IV nutrition? Procedures such as these that can be compelled, or coerced, if necessary by force, are the primary focus in what follows.