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."
I agree with you..but for a different reason..Those who might have done it..and I am not about to criticize their motives, would NOT be blabbing about it to the press..
They may have given them morphine but they didn't do it for the purpose of KILLING THEM. If they gave them morphine knowing it COULD kill them and the patient was in unbearable pain, it's done everyday in every hospital in the United States. Do you leave someone in pain or do you give someone a drug knowing that it MIGHT kill them?
If this was true the media would have jumped all over it by now
Aren't we all. It's a shame this "doctor" didn't set up a suicide stand right inside the Superdome. She could have "ended the suffering" of hundreds of those miserable evacuees right then and there. As a matter of fact, she could probably still save millions of dollars in reconstruction costs by bringing her perverted form of "dignity" to the remaining survivors. "Humanitarians" like her could even become a part of every disaster relief plan.
Fox has reported false info before--it happens to everyone (remember Rita Cosby saying Gore had won the election?). I'd be careful with this one. It has the feel of "urban legend" to it.
I agree, if by some cosmic mischance I find my self in that situation, I only hope my doctor/caregiver has the moral rectitude to do the right thing. Or at least load the syringe and let me push it home.
Regards,
GtG
Some things here are not clear. If she gave morhpine to kill pain, and put the patient out of it, that's one thing. If she overdosed the patient to kill them, that's murder.
That's pretty interesting. The posted article says that William McQueen is an emergency worker clearing trees in Albita springs (I don't know where that is, but it seems that Albita Springs is not a hospital in New Orleans). So, how is he familiar with doctors supposedly euthanizing patients in NO hospitals?
True or not, the Mail prob doesn't really care. Many on this forum might be shocked at how anti-American the British press is, starting with that miserable socialist propaganda machine, the BBC, who run hit pieces on Bush and the USA on a daily basis (and love-ins for Chavez).
I consider Tony Blair to be a loyal ally in the war on terror. As for Britain in general, from this point on, it's a question mark.
I will if you can tell me why killing someone instead of letting God decide is dignified.
I put Superdome in there because I thought that's what I heard on the FNC interview. If wrong, that is my mistake. Otherwise I posted the article referred to in the interview.
I truly find this very very very hard to believe.
It makes no sense.
If this woman actually did this then in my eyes she committed a crime.
The Daily Mail is not known for telling anything close to the truth.
This is also being reported in The Daily Telegraph.
http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,16566858-5001022,00.html
I wonder why the term "Superdome Euthanasia" is used, when the article implies that this took place in a hospital. I'm chalking this up to British Tabloidism for now.
"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. "
THat's 'cuz it's all fabrication......
We'll see, but it sure smells like a fake story to me. Pee-uuuu.
Me, too. Send it to Hugh Hewitt.com who is collecting the media hysterical stories which turned out to be lies. I am sure this will turn out to be one of them. Or check with snopes.com which may already have debunked this.
Just as you should remember your post when you are conscious but paralyzed after your stroke and being starved to death over several weeks according to your "dignified" medical directives.
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