Thursday, October 13, 2005

The Real Barbarians of New Orleans?

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Three days after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, staff members at the city's Memorial Medical Center had repeated discussions about euthanizing patients they thought might not survive the ordeal, according to a doctor and nurse manager who were in the hospital at the time.

The Louisiana attorney general's office is investigating allegations that mercy killings occurred and has requested that autopsies be performed on all 45 bodies taken from the hospital after the storm.

Orleans Parish coroner Frank Minyard said investigators have told him they think euthanasia may have been committed.

"They thought someone was going around injecting people with some sort of lethal medication," Minyard said.

Dr. Bryant King, who was working at Memorial when conditions were at their worst, told CNN that while he did not witness any acts of euthanasia, "most people know something happened that shouldn't have happened."


cnn story

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Creepy.

I heard they were afraid they could not take care of them.

Why weren;t these people moved before the hurricane hit?

Rick Ballard said...

That's an excellent question for Mayor Nagin or Gov. Blanco, Terrye. Given all the fiction that has issued from NO I'd like to hear something about autopsy results prior to accepting this as factual (in the sense that euthanasia actually was performed).

If it was performed then the health care providers responsible are going to be in the worst trouble they've ever thought of. This report tells us nothing about the condition of the patients and the level of care that was necessary to keep them alive. There are medical conditions that require levels of treatment that are impossible to provide without power.