OK, I'll tell you what the difference is.

Artificial feeding is used in humans and animals to prevent death. It is done in some medical conditions when there is no other way of intake of food intake possible. It is not a nice procedure as I know from own experience. Like with several other medical treatments one only agrees to it because the alternative is worse.

Force feeding of geese is not done to prevent death or because no other way of food intake is open to them but to make them take in much more food than they'd like on their own and much more than is good for them.

The procedures are similar but the intention and the context are very different: one is done to prevent harm that cannot prevented any other way the other has no real necessity and does harm. Therefore these two are usually distinguished in English and if for instance your father can not swallow anymore due to a cancer you'd say he is 'artificially fed'. You wouldn't use the expression he is 'force fed' even if he has not made the decision himself (being unconscious perhaps).

A difficult ethical question comes up when someone wants to die (terminal cancer perhaps; why prolong the suffering by artificial feeding?) or is on hungerstrike. Then the question is should we respect the wish of the person not wanting to take in food or not. Even if we do not respect that wish it still would be artificial feeding and not force feeding.

What has to be done in such a case has a different response in different cultures and countries. Margaret Thatcher's decision not to use artificial feeding against the will of the Republican prisoners was obviously ok according to British law. In Germany, that would have been a case of homicide. Artificial feeding has to be prescribed even against the will of a person in a case of imminent death with rare exceptions for terminal illness. I don't know how the US law deals with such a situation.

When our terrorist prisoners went on hungerstrike and one killed himself this way (Holger Meins) the supporters screamed 'murder'. When the others were artificially fed the supporters of the terrorists screamed 'force feeding'. Of course they used that expression instead of the correct one for the ugly associations it had. That word was one of their weapons in a propaganda war.

One can debate whether one should use artificial feeding in cases of hunger strike when the alternative is sure death. But we should not use the propaganda expressions from one side in such a debate. It makes us look like partisan sympathisers. A bit similar like using in Mudcat discussions 'crusade against terror'.

Wolfgang