They killed them!

[dcentity2000]

We had to kill our patients
by C AROLINE GRAHAM and JO KNOWSLEY, Mail on Sunday
09:01am 11th September 2005

Doctors 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.

Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials. One emergency official, William 'Forest' McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."

Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana, and The Mail on Sunday is protecting the identities of the medical staff concerned to prevent them being made scapegoats for the events of last week.

Their families believe their confessions are an indictment of the appalling failure of American authorities to help those in desperate need after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, claiming thousands of lives and making 500,000 homeless.

Source and full story: Daily Mailhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...e_id=361980&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=&ct=5

What a horrible story



Rich::

 

[Pea-n-Me]

No judgements from me if this is true. We weren't there and we cannot understand the horrors of the situation - and conditions in those hospitals were truly abysmal in the deepest sense of the word (no electricity, running water, medications, food, supplies, linens; patients lying in diarrhea, vomit, unable to breathe, etc...). Doctors are allowed to use professional judgement and if they thought these patients had no hope they must have seen it as a kindness under the circumstances.

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

The one question I would ask is were these patients truly terminal or were they not? Were they providing "comfort measures only" beforehand or were they actively trying to save their lives? We really don't know but to me that would make a difference. And I doubt the doctors ignored medical ethics (probably reporters words since they're not in quotations from the doctor); I would guess they in fact used every facet of their professional judement to the best of their ability.

I agree I hope God has mercy on their souls; they'll have to live with this for the rest of their lives. Some may become suicidal over it. I would be willing to bet none took pleasure in it.

 

[agnes!]

Those poor doctors and caregivers did the best they could under unimaginable circumstances.

And I hope the indictments will include Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco.

agnes!

 

[dcentity2000]

You said it, Pea-n-Me.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind people that The Mail isn't exactly the zenith of quality within the press...



Rich::

 

[Virgo10]

No judgements from me if this is true. We weren't there and we cannot understand the horrors of the situation - and conditions in those hospitals were truly abysmal in the deepest sense of the word (no electricity, running water, medications, food, supplies, linens; patients lying in diarrhea, vomit, unable to breathe, etc...). Doctors are allowed to use professional judgement and if they thought these patients had no hope they must have seen it as a kindness under the circumstances.



The one question I would ask is were these patients truly terminal or were they not? Were they providing "comfort measures only" beforehand or were they actively trying to save their lives? We really don't know but to me that would make a difference. And I doubt the doctors ignored medical ethics (probably reporters words since they're not in quotations from the doctor); I would guess they in fact used every facet of their professional judement to the best of their ability.

I agree I hope God has mercy on their souls; they'll have to live with this for the rest of their lives. Some may become suicidal over it. I would be willing to bet none took pleasure in it.

ITA and would add, IF this is true I would never judge what measures they took to do the humane thing. I wasn't there.

 

[bsnyder]

I have no comment on the euthenasia aspect.

However, am I the only one who finds it incredible that so many of these hospitals seemed unprepared? Forget the fact that it was an expected hurricane. What if it were an unexpected terrorist attack? Shouldn't they have disaster plans that allow them to operate, without electricity and other supplies, for more than 24-48 hours without backup from the authorities?

 

[Saffron]

Great post Pea-n-Me. I totally agree with you and hate to think the story could be true.

 

[shortbun]

I have no comment on the euthenasia aspect.

However, am I the only one who finds it incredible that so many of these hospitals seemed unprepared? Forget the fact that it was an expected hurricane. What if it were an unexpected terrorist attack? Shouldn't they have disaster plans that allow them to operate, without electricity and other supplies, for more than 24-48 hours without backup from the authorities?

What would you suggest their plan be? Magic? surrounded by water, no plumbing, no electricity, no security....only the White House has a plan of that type and theirs is funded by our taxes with heavy artiliery and secret bunkers. You and yours keep questioning the judgement of those directly affected. We keep explaining they were trapped. If you can't understand that by now, I don't know how to help you understand. There are some things you just can not plan for.

 

[ThAnswr]

What if it were an unexpected terrorist attack?

Hmmmm..............where have I heard this before? It sounds so familiar.

 

[totalia]

I don't know what to think. I know and understand why they did it. I guess it comes down to not having much choice. I find that just... disgusting. But they have to do what they have to do. And this situation was already life and death.

The fact that the hospitals were uprepared... they were prepared. To a point. But lets see what YOU do 5 days after disaster strikes and you've long ago run out of food, water, sanitation, and electricity and seen no hope of being saved from your local gvt.

 

[bsnyder]

I don't know what to think. I know and understand why they did it. I guess it comes down to not having much choice. I find that just... disgusting. But they have to do what they have to do. And this situation was already life and death.

The fact that the hospitals were uprepared... they were prepared. To a point. But lets see what YOU do 5 days after disaster strikes and you've long ago run out of food, water, sanitation, and electricity and seen no hope of being saved from your local gvt.

The moral - prepare to provide for yourself for that length of time - 5 days. That's how long it will take the Feds to respond, in most cases. And a critical service provider, like a hospital should be prepared, to be on the safe side, for longer than that.

The system is set up to work from the bottom up. From individual responsibility then to the local officials, then to the state, and then to the Feds. Is anyone advocating that we change that, and pay for a system where the federal government pre-positions massive resources and personnel in every city, town and community in the entire country, just to be ready when disaster strikes? I guess we could take it to the extreme, and pay for every individual to have a personal bodyguard 24/7.

 

[totalia]

Pityful isn't it? They can respond immediately during 9/11 but it takes 5 days to respond for any other emergency. Thats pretty sad.

 

[ThAnswr]

The moral - prepare to provide for yourself for that length of time - 5 days. That's how long it will take the Feds to respond, in most cases. .

Five days.............how pathetic and pitiful. This is how low we've sunk in the US.

Once we could've put a man on the moon; now some poor ******* can't even get a bottle of water from their government that they've been supporting through tax dollars.

And we all pay taxes in one form or another.

The moral is don't vote for people who think government is bad and government is the problem. Small wonder you get what you pay for.

Or in this case, after 4 years and 22 billion dollars spent by Homeland Security, you don't get what you pay for.

 

[totalia]

*nods* Well put ThAnswer.

 

[Viking]

Or in this case, after 4 years and 22 billion dollars spent by Homeland Security, you don't get what you pay for.

But perhaps the Iraqis get what you paid for. No, wait - it seems that your government messed up that job, too

 

[bsnyder]

apropos of the discussion here, I posted this yesterday, and with the exception of a couple of people, most of the Angry Left didn't want to discuss this at all. Which is scary, considering the fact that we'll have other disasters to contend with in the future, long after they don't have President Bush to blame for everything that possibly goes wrong.

Front-Line Feds
Posted 9/9/2005

Disasters: Do Americans really want to push Washington deeper into the role of first responder? If that's so, they need to be more careful what they wish for.

If you want a hint of how Hurricane Katrina might change the federal government and everyone's relation to it, follow the pointing fingers. See who's getting the bulk of the blame.

Michael Brown, now relieved of his duties supervising FEMA's relief effort, has been the designated scapegoat role so far. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin haven't landed in the hot seat — at least not yet — for their egregious front-line failures.

Such selective outrage says a lot about the Democrat-media complex and its politics. But something deeper is also going on here. This focus on what the federal government did wrong, and what it may now be doing right, is in tune with a long-running trend that crosses party lines.

It used to be that the states, counties and cities had clear first-responder roles — keeping or restoring order, evacuating people from harm's way and, before that, having credible emergency plans in place. But the old protocols are breaking down.

If we read the post-Katrina critics right, federal military and civilian agencies are now supposed to mobilize and get to the scene of a natural disaster as fast as the state and local authorities who were there all along.

This new standard for federal action has emerged over several decades in response to major disasters and shifts in public attitudes about the proper scope of national government.

FEMA, which Jimmy Carter cobbled together in 1979 to straighten out the tangle of federal disaster programs, has come to represent the disaster "cavalry" in the public mind — the folks you can count on when the local authorities can't cut it.

The flip side of this confidence is complacency. It's only our guess at this point, but close scrutiny of the Katrina preparation and response may show the city of New Orleans and state of Louisiana did too little because they assumed that FEMA would do so much.

Calls for reform of America's disaster-response system are inevitable and proper after a tragedy on the scale of Katrina. But this is no time to act in haste or to just do more of the same and expand the federal role even further. Not only might this increase a false sense of security at the state and local levels, but it also would push federal agencies into work — such as street-level law enforcement — they are simply not meant to do.

Finally, there's the question of prerogatives. If we really want first-responder performance from Washington, it will need more power than it has now. Instead of waiting for a major catastrophe to order an evacuation, for instance, a truly front-line FEMA would be able to do the job itself, sending federal troops to drag people from their homes. Earlier, back at the preparedness phase, first-responder feds should also be able to decide who builds what and where in a flood-prone (or fire- or quake-prone) area.

We doubt if most Americans, much less state and local officials, would want Washington so directly running their lives. But if Washington is to be blamed for everything, then by rights it should be giving all the orders.

A much better course is to strengthen states and localities while demanding more of them. And the best way to do this may be to set clearer limits on what the federal government can and will do the next time disaster strikes.

 

[Planogirl]

I think it's so sad but I'm glad that the hospital staff did what they could. I still think about those poor people who drowned in the nursing home. That is beyond imagination.

I think that it's important to define the role of Homeland Security. It's obviously not to close the borders or help in the case of a disaster.

 

[totalia]

I didn't answer bsnyder because I can't answer. I can't decide things for your country. But I imagine you know what I would say.

 

[dcentity2000]

Angry Left

Smelly Right



Rich::

 

[ducklite]

You said it, Pea-n-Me.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind people that The Mail isn't exactly the zenith of quality within the press...



Rich::

Exactly the thought I had...

Anne