"When federal prison officials at British Columbia’s Matsqui Psychiatric Centre routinely examined a Doukhobor woman on a hunger strike last week, they quickly realized that the frail 69-year-old was deteriorating. Doctors who saw Mary Astaforoff, a member of the radical Sons of Freedom sect, sent her by ambulance to Vancouver General Hospital about 90 km away. There, hospital staff force-fed Astaroroff for the second time since she again began refusing food in late September to protest against a three-year prison sentence for arson."