I first learned about this occurring from a friend whose relative works in a New Orleans hospital, and I felt like I’d been socked in the gut. I was loathe to talk about it, because I didn’t want to cause trouble for private citizens, but it’s a matter of public record now. Doctors in New Orleans authorized the euthanasia of terminal patients, rather than subject them to worse deaths or victimization. They found themselves on the horns of a dilemma I can’t even imagine, because of the hell New Orleans descended into. It’s illegal, but it’s arguably merciful.
— story below the fold —
We had to kill our patients
by CAROLINE GRAHAM and JO KNOWSLEY
The Mail
Sunday 11th September 2005Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.
In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she ‘prayed for God to have mercy on her soul’ after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.
Triage — To assign patients into three groups by degree of urgency of illness or injury.
“We divided patients into three categories: those who were traumatised but medically fit enough to survive, those who needed urgent care, and the dying.
“People would find it impossible to understand the situation. I had to make life-or-death decisions in a split second.
Euthanasia — The painless killing of a patient suffering from terminal illness.
“I injected morphine into those patients who were dying and in agony. If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose. And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul.”…
“It came down to giving people the basic human right to die with dignity.”
explained the practice to a CNN reporter at the time patients were waiting for rescue at the Convention Center. It was reported LIVE from NOLA. It was all part of the horror story and it is not news to anyone who was following the Katrina story live. Those not expected to live were triaged into the “Expected” (expected to die) category. It was a stunning revelation at the time but under the circumstances it was not shocking. Now it is being reported with the intent to shock, now that the context has changed.
I didn’t find this article sensationalistic, at all. I don’t watch much CNN, myself. I learned of it, as I said, from a friend, last week. I do find it shocking. Not wrong, but shocking. It’s of course totally illegal, and I’m actually concerned that there will be prosecutions, after the fact. I think it was necessary, and merciful, but I worry that, in the cold light of day, the same mentality that led to zero tolerance for people looting food and water to survive, will press for the letter of the law on this. I hope it doesn’t come that. And I really feel for the doctors and nurses who went from trying to save lives, to ending them, because its clear that it was a moral quandary for some.
Superdome, the Convention center, when the doctor calmly told the reporter about their triage system and the necessity of giving morphine to the “Expected’s” it seemed like the most natural thing to do. There was no wavering on the moral quandry, because they really had no choice. Triage is like that, doctors turn away from the dying to save those they know can be saved. Now, when the story is taken out of the context of that moment, I’m sure it will seem shocking to many people.
What would be ‘shocking’ to me would be if these doctors were indicted for mercy killing. It could never come to that under those circumstances, I don’t think.
At the time I was thinking about all those hypocrites who flocked to save the life of one person who had really died 15 years earlier. I thought of Bush going to Washington on an urgent mission to prevent the merciful death of Terri Schiavo. Where was their urgency now to save those people dying in the Superdome and the Convention center?
There was no wavering on the moral quandry, because they really had no choice.
You don’t know that. There were many people involved. This was not one physician’s cool-headed decision. This was doctors deciding and nurses being directed to administer lethal doses, in many cases. From the interviews in that article, it seems there was definitely some moral wrangling. Decisions made under duress are exactly that. When the urgency of the moment passes, some memories are hard to shake. Like many things that occurred during that catastrophe, this is the stuff of nightmares.
It is precisely because we have leaders like Bush and DeLay that I have concerns about legal repercussions from all this. It’s exactly the kind thing these hypocrites love to grandstand about. It’s exactly the kind of thing they love to distract the public with, when they are avoiding their own accountability. We’re talking about a President who was more concerned about the disgraceful looting of food and water, than the colossal failures of his own administration. These are people who traffic in moral absolutes for everyone but themselves.
Yes, I know that from listening to the doctor on CNN who was talking about a group decision. He was explaining how triage works and how they had the choice between allowing people to suffer in agony for days while waiting for rescue that was not forthcoming or giving them morphine and putting them in a cool place. (It was over 100 degrees at the time.) They felt they had no choice. This position was imposed upon them by the lack of rescue. I just don’t see how they could ever be found guilty of anything. But as you point out, Rove etc. may have other ideas.
This non-controversy (in my opinion) will only serve to distract from the criminal neglect of Bush and FEMA and others, just as you state. I hope it does not get much mileage.
CNN
Oh goody! the next head of FEMA is the winger who recommended duct-tape as a defense against nuclear and biological attack.