Posted on 09/11/2005 2:36:06 PM PDT by 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."
BS alert.
No names of any medical people.
Report second hand from a Mr. McQueen...
We had two 2900KVA EMD, 16 cylinder gensets; total weight close to 70 tons. I doubt anyone would want to put them 15 feet in the air.
Are you sure you have any idea of which we speak?
Those are some huge units!
I wouldn't think that an emergency genset for minimal hospital standby requirements need anything approaching 24,000 AMP's of power.
I got this earlier yesterday, and I have been googling all day to find SOME reference to it, ANY reference to it ANY place online...beside the UK daily mail/Mail on Sunday website. I can't find it anyplace.
I do not believe this article. If two reporters from UK can 'hear' this... SOMEONE here in the US would have also. The ONLY places I see this article or any reference to it is in emails and on sites like this, and blogs.
I will back down if there is proof, but until then, I will not be spreading this kind of story. God bless.
THAT is not Triage!! THAT is murder, if it happened. Triage means you TREAT the least injured first, and those near death who cannot be helped, you keep comfortable. It does NOT mean outright inject them and murder them.
As I said, I highly doubt that this took place, but do not call what is described here as TRIAGE. It isn't.
Each locomotive engine (16 cyl) is rated 2900KVA, 2400KW; mounted on 3 foot thick slab, 4160 volts parallel switch gear, 2 DWP commercial 4160 volt feeds with 6 transformers with automatic switchover if one feed lost.
Building size 6400 square feet, 22 feet high with mufflers and cooling towers on the roof; pretty hard to put on stilts.
VAWMC is a 3,500 patient-bed facility.
Big stuff!
We had a 1000 kvh elevated generator maintaining molten iron in four electric furnaces and 8 electric brass furnaces during hurricane Agnes in our 250,000 sqft foundries/machine shop. That is until a floating oil barrel shorted out our system. We were able to pour the brass into some sand cavities built up by the Bobcat, But we had to destroy the furnace linings to get out the 24 ton hardened grey iron ingots.
I don't believe that this is anything like a 3500 bed facility, as news reports talk of 35 elders died in a hospital.
I can't envision your power stuff, as I would think that if sick patients could be corralled into one area, even a few Honda portable generators could leave a few lights on, a few small computers, some IV drip machines and whatever. Anything better than injecting morphine and saying goodby.
I'm not an electrical engineer, I just believe that better provisions could have been made. Geez, even your system is set on 3" of concrete. Build a wall around that, up to over levee level, and you should be good to go in a flood!
I have been very patient with you; now, I don't know why.
...:I have been very patient with you; now, I don't know why.
"......
Should we meet somewhere?? I'll wear a red bowtie!
I have no regrets.
By the way, I'm flattered you remembered something discussed many years ago. You must have just been waiting, frothing at the mouth, to bring this up. Congratulations.
To be perfectly clear, what do you have no regrets about?
Wrong. I hit abuse on #308.
If it is the truth, why would you do that? I don't make stuff up you know.
Drop the personal attacks and cease dragging old arguments onto this thread. Also, do not post personal info about another member.
Suspensions are next
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