We had to kill our patients

The Daily Mail ^ | 09/11/2005 | CAROLINE GRAHAM and JO KNOWSLEY

[kenth]

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.

'These people were going to die anyway'

The doctor said: "I didn't know if I was doing the right thing. But I did not have time. I had to make snap decisions, under the most appalling circumstances, and I did what I thought was right.

"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."

The doctor, who finally fled her hospital late last week in fear of being murdered by the armed looters, said: "This was not murder, this was compassion. They would have been dead within hours, if not days. We did not put people down. What we did was give comfort to the end.

"I had cancer patients who were in agony. In some cases the drugs may have speeded up the death process.

"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.

"It came down to giving people the basic human right to die with dignity.

"There were patients with Do Not Resuscitate signs. Under normal circumstances, some could have lasted several days. But when the power went out, we had nothing.

"Some of the very sick became distressed. We tried to make them as comfortable as possible.

"The pharmacy was under lockdown because gangs of armed looters were roaming around looking for their fix. You have to understand these people were going to die anyway."

Mr McQueen, a utility manager for the town of Abita Springs, half an hour north of New Orleans, told relatives that patients had been 'put down', saying: "They injected them, but nurses stayed with them until they died."

Mr McQueen has been working closely with emergency teams and added: "They had to make unbearable decisions."

[eastforker]

Dang, is this cultural jihad revisited, you sound just like him. I guess you believe in zero tolerence also, there is such a thing as common sense.

[Arkie2]

Thyere's such a thing as the law.

[Halls]

FV is not fasinated with death, she is troubled by murder and Euthansia. I consider to be troubled by it as well. It is truly said when anyone kills someone and calls it merciful.

[deport]

The only named person in the article with a quote... Here he is......

Wind damage

Mother-of-two Suzanne McQueen, of Maidstone, Kent, is waiting for news of her American husband (William) Forest McQueen.

He has been working in his home country since 1997, and lives and works with his brother in the Abita Springs area, north of Lake Pontchartrain, which is north of New Orleans.

The couple married in the UK in 1991, and Suzanne said she and her daughters - aged 11 and 13 - were planning to move to the US to join her husband as soon as was possible.

Mr McQueen's wife has had no news from his friends and family

Part of his job there is to maintain the grounds of an old plantation house, she said.

"I phoned the morning the hurricane hit, and his brother said Forest hadn't been home for the last 24 hours because he'd been on shift clearing up trees and lines from all the wind damage that came before the hurricane. I haven't heard anything since.

"I've been going through a list of phone numbers for friends and family in the area and can't get through to anyone.

"Up until yesterday or the day before I thought everything would be okay and that they hadn't been in touch because the power was down. But I've since seen more information about the amount of wind destruction there.

"I am getting very concerned. I am trying to contact people from work so the girls don't know how worried I am."

---

Family's hope for hurricane dad

The family spend every evening making hourly calls to the US

A man last heard of when he went out to clear debris in the build-up to Hurricane Katrina is one of 96 Britons still missing in the US.

William McQueen's family, from Maidstone, Kent, have spent each evening calling Louisiana in vain.

On Wednesday, Susan McQueen appeared on BBC TV with her daughters to appeal for news of her husband, known as Forest.

"We just have to keep hoping that we will hear, that it will be good news, and people will be safe," she said.

The last time Mrs McQueen spoke to her estranged husband was two weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

On the morning of the storm, she telephoned his brother Stephen in Abita Springs, where Mr McQueen was living.

[end snip]

[eastforker]

So IYO if a judge had ordered it it would have been OK?

[bonfire]

Yes, death can be a blessing. There are no words to describe watching someone suffer.

If this story is true, I pray for the doctors. They are going to need our prayers.

[Hattie]

I don't know why any hospital director would not evacuate critical patients in the face of a Cat5 hurricane. There was plenty of warning.

[ExtremeUnction]

I don't believe this.

[jwalsh07]

Martial Law isn't in any books. And what you or I would have done is not productive discussion I think. The question is what should be done to assure the situation does not recur and is it politically palatable enough for the left and right to actually do something worthwhile.

[Halls]

I have been there last week. I watched my 89 year old grandfather suffer and die over a week ago. He died at Sept. 1st at midnight. He was awake and able to eat a bit until Sunday night/early Monday morning before on the week he died.

It was awful and sad and I prayed every minute for God to take him. He finally did, but He did it on his time. Little did we know but God has a plan for every person even up until their final moments. They are not ready to die a minute before they die. They die when God calls them home. If my grandfather had died minutes before he did my grandmother would not have gotten certain social security benefits for the rest of the month and other benefits. God knew right at midnight was when he was going to call my PaPaw home. He had a plan. I praise him for that.

The last couple of days my Papaw was dying he did not eat, although was given water. He barely took any of it. I am on who believes in not starving anyone or dehydrating someone to death, but the final moments of ones life they don't eat or drink and I understand that.

But I don't believe in putting someone down like a dog even though they are dying. As long as they are still in the land of the living they aren't dead yet and it is God who decides when they go. I hated seeing my PaPaw suffer and I spent lots of time just sitting next to him stroking his hand, singing old hymns to him, crying, praying, talking to him, and just sitting still watching him.

I understand what it is like to see someone suffer and die, but I praise God that my Papaw was not taken by human hands, but rathers Gods. I wish that all would see that God is the author of our life.

[Torie]

I think a national emergency is. Eisenhower federalized the national guard in Arkansas. But yes, the past is the past, the milk is spilled, and we got lucky, thank heavens, and we need to give the tools to the CIC to do the right thing, without having a legal debate about it, for the future.

[Halls]

Exactly, the hospitals should have been evacuated long before and had plenty of time. The critical patients should have been careflighted out to area hospitals and I believe they likey were, so if this story is totally true i have a hard time believing a hospital would leave dying and critical patients in the hospital in NO.

[eastforker]

So you are saying we should not prolong life with medicine when we know end of life is certain? See, that argument can be used either way.

[Mears]

bfl

[KarenMarie]

If Blanco and Nagin are not impeached and prosecuted, it will be a travesty.... That is never gonna happen.

1) they are both dems. and dems would never let that happen. No matter how untrue it would be, the dems would be screaming that Bush is trying to cover up this all being his fault by blaming the mayor and governor.

2) landrieu is shooting off her pie hole on every station imaginable with horrific and illogical hate spin that put this all on the feds. And even though there are a lot of us who see it for what it is, there are still enough morons out there that will believe anything if it is said often enough.

3) By the time the smoke clears on this 'investigation', most ppl would have moved on to other stuff and not care about this enough to take action.

4) and most importantly... when this all does see the light of day... dems will soooo want to sweep in under the carpet that they will find something else to yell about to take attention away from this. Yell first and yell loud is their motto. Get the first shot in and hope it is the one ppl remember. Then move on to something else... so in the end, the kool-aid drinker just have headlines; no proof, no truth, just headlines.

: |

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

"The question is what should be done to assure the situation does not recur and is it politically palatable enough for the left and right to actually do something worthwhile."

So long as Constitutional rights aren't violated, guns aren't grabbed 'UK' style to increase violence, people aren't run out of their homes by force, and state leaders have the last word about their states, I'm all for it. Otherwise, it's tyranny with a false halo.

An old lady wants to stay in her house and dies, it's her choice, for crying out loud! As for patients in hospitals, if the governor failed them, then its up to the people to start a recall vote, or whatever else they are allowed to do to their governor. Otherwise, they get what they deserve in the future. If they want to gripe about the president not dragging the governor out of the state and taking over, well let the nitwits go ahead and gripe, and suffer in future years for their idiocy.

[KarenMarie]

One of the best posts I have read on this thread.

:)

[processing please hold]

I don't believe one word of it. Damn, it's by the dailymail for Christmas sake.

[processing please hold]

You believe that story? Do you also believe the cannibal story as well?

[HateBill]

Well another Superdome rumor shot. The rumor: there was no medical attention. The fact: there was medical attention. (Maybe these doctors shot the ill with morphine so that the looters wouldn't get it.)