We had to kill our patients

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

[blu]

Bullcrap. Only one named source...telling his folks they had to "put down" the patients...sounds like fiction for pay.

[Texas Songwriter]

I missed the day they taught "Precognition" in medical school. Fortune telling was another of my shortcomings.

I do notice that the good doctor escaped with her ass intact, though. Flow charts, euphemisms, and priortization seems to have worked well for her personal outcome.

"We did not put them down..." like a horse with a fractured tibia..."We made them more comfortable". She should and could have enlisted the assistance of a gang member to relieve the pain with a bullet to her patients brain. It might have been faster than the MS or dilaudid.

The unit cohesion seemed to dissolve as Ms.Dr. forgot the addage, "Do no harm". Had she come thru the marines and subscribed to the idea of never leaving your fellow marine behind, more people might be alive today. Expediency is the coin of her realm. I wonder if she obtained informed consent to kill her patients. I am told by my friend, a lawyer, that a patient cannot sign away the right of a physician to commit a tort or a crime. They do not possess that power under law.

[mylife]

Wow!
Now the telegraph is reputable.

This is getting legs

[Patriot from Philly]

The Brits did seem to have a disproportional number of strange happenings. Or maybe they have a flare for the dramatic and want to milk their 15 minutes of fame.

The weirdest one was in the print Sun so I can't provide a link. But it apparently claims that US soldiers where firing from helicopter gunships at poor blacks looking for food.

The author seemed real anti-US military so they want to make sure the military is tarred, since they are the real heroes of this fiasco.

[operation clinton cleanup]

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.

I doubt this story is true, but killing patients should not be covered up for fear of the perpetrators being labeled scapegoats.

[bvw]

I saw an interview with a pathologist who claimed to have been the ONLY doctor in the Superdome. He said nothing of this sort. I do not trust this story.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Not sure if I buy this.

[GretchenM]

Until sources are named to their own hurt, I don't see how the public can be expected to believe this.

[MizSterious]

So many people are willing, no, make that anxious to believe the worst. How long before we start hearing about flying saucers and alien babies in the Super Dome? (Always looked a little like a sci-fi project anyway.)

[mylife]

The DUmmies are praising this.

[Mamzelle]

Doctors in this situation may know that to treat pain with some patients may hasten death--a fact with morphine and the terminally ill who suffer great pain. But almost all docs will still treat the pain, at least until some law or outcry stops them, usually with personal misgivings and discomfort. I suppose you could take these expressions of dismay as some sort of evidence for mercy killing...? But anyone with sense would not.

[Alright_on_the_LeftCoast]

From the article, it appears God had decided....these were patients with no hope of survival, so I can surmise from your post, that rather than having a more merciful death, you would have just left them behind to die, have them linger painfully and have their situation exacerbated by dehydration or starvation?

[Maigrey]

But if they were in Triage mode, why were they using their prescious resources to give multiple doses of morphine, a non-renewable commodity, on euthanizing patients? Would't it have been better to use it in pain management for those who had a good chance of living?

[don-o]

I flat do not believe this

Fine. But wrap your brain arond the fact that there were a given number of terminal patients all along the Gulf Coast before the storm hit, Their time to die would have been, inevitably, as the the storm peaked and the dikes broke.

Doctors who were there did what they needed to do. A double shot of morphine is not unheard of, even outside of disasters, Usually, it is not considered newsworthy. But, it happens to ease suffering.

[Petronski]

In the name of all that is holy, this had better not be true.


***puke***

[SE Mom]

I know they did- I have friends who did that evac- it is a SHINING example of how to "git 'er done"...the VA docs and nurses were awesome.

[don-o]

The DUmmies are praising this.

Here's a quarter - call someone who cares.

What the DU says is about as interesting as "already posted here"

[freedumb2003]

I think this flat-out false.

It is another urban myth in the making, like the 7-yo with the slit throat.

[don-o]

would NOT be blabbing about it to the press..

One would hope so...but a moment of "fame" seems to be a temptation that break up all boundaries

[onyx]

Correct.