Medical experts never testified in Katrina hospital deaths

CNN ^ | 8/26/07 | Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston

[Iwo Jima]

Then you dispute Dr. Pou’s statements. She does not claim accident. She claims that it was justified because her subjective intent (she now claims) was to alleviate suffering. Of course, death would have that effect.

[PAR35]

They could have been moved

Sure, they could have been moved, but neither the state nor the feds made any real effort to do so.

[spunkets]

"Dr. Cyril Wecht, the former coroner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and a past president of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists... "The hard scientific facts are those from five leading experts, [the patients died] from massive lethal doses of morphine and Versed."

Wecht's full of it. A lethal dose is on the order of hundreds of mgs/kg. The lawyer claimed his ma was found with an 8mg dose after death. No dose was given for the versed. If the publicity seeking "expert" was concerned for the truth, he would have quoted the dosages and what a lethal dose is.

The doc's stated intent was to put the patients to sleep. THat's a reasonable thing to do in the given circumstances. The versed is an anti-aniety pill. It's used to take the patient's mind off their predicament. The lawyer's ma was already on morphine, so 8mgs isn't an unreasonable dose to render the patient asleep.

Those were her patients, because the other docs were AWOL. She was entirely correct in taking them on and making decisions on treatment.

"It is disgusting that these murderers are escaping justice."

There's no evidence anyone was murdered, or even that any extraordinary dose of meds were given. It's understandable that a prosecutor would not consider 8mgs of morphine a lethal dose when it clearly is far from it.

[hocndoc]

This is only the 2nd time in my life that I’ve asked this question in this context: Where did you go to medical school?

Where is the documentation that the hospital administrator “expressed” intent to have someone kill the patients? One of the doctor’s accusers was a healthy young male doctor who walked out the hospital before the patients, Pou and the nurses were rescued.

[hocndoc]

You don’t know what evidence the grand jury received. The bulk of the article is devoted to telling us that no one knows what evidence the grand jury received, other than the testimony of the two nurses.

[Mamzelle]

Nonsense. She was trying to treat patients under conditions of hysteria and panic--the patient's panic, the panic of the technical personnel suddenly deprived of their high-tech tools, and probably her own panic.

But I'm willing to say, upfront, that while I was watching the horrible events unfolding with the flood and mayhem in New Orleans, I am absolutely willing to give a doctor who stayed behind, did not abandon the patients, the benefit of a very large doubt!!

Someone with a bitter resentment of physicians, say, a malpractice lawyer...may have an innate unwillingness to profer such a benefit.

[Mamzelle]

re: This is only the 2nd time in my life that I’ve asked this question in this context: Where did you go to medical school?)))

Patients now all go to med school on the Internet.

[spunkets]

"Craig, a New Orleans lawyer. "It showed that Mom had received on September 1 eight milligrams of morphine, which was four times the amount that she was prescribed by her doctor, and which was a lethal amount that was certainly enough to kill her," Nelson said. Nelson said neither he nor his sister Kathy, a registered nurse who was with their mother after Katrina until guards ordered her to leave the hospital, were called before the grand jury. Their forensic expert wasn't called either."

Probably, because what they had to say was irrelevant and flat out wrong. A lethal dose of morphine is on the order of 100's of mgs, not 8mgs. The dose found on autopsy is completely consistent with the docs stated intent of rendering the patients asleep.

As far as the lawyer's concern for his ma goes, the money grubbing oaf left his ma in that predicament, while he probably exited NO himself for his own comfort and safety. It's also very unlikely that a nurse would be tossed from such a situation, unless they were being a hindrance.

[hocndoc]

The nurses did testify. They did so because they were the ones with Dr. Pou at the last.

I know and trust doctors who know and trust Dr. Pou. Their word, along with the parts of the story that I’ve read elsewhere lead me to believe Dr. Pou’s version. She says that she did not intend to kill the patients, only to relieve symptoms in patients who could not be moved through the hole in the wall to the helicopter or into boats, when they could no longer be treated.

[Iwo Jima]

I read Dr. Pou's interview with Newsweek. It left me cold. Most unconvincing, especially her appeal to her faith.

So what if there was no electricity, no water, few batteries? I've been in such conditions and never thought of killing anybody. Many others have been in far worse conditions.

The Grand Jury did not "determine that no one murdered anyone." No grand jury does that. They just returned a "no bill" based on the evidence presented which did not include any of the medical experts whose opinions were the basis of the charges. Another grand jury could be empaneled and with the full range of available evidence return a "true bill" (that is not double jeopardy).

The reference to the morphine for the 90 year old woman is not the injections in question, IIRC. The injections in question were not documented in the medical charts IIRC. What is telling to me about that story is that they ran off that woman's daughter who is a nurse before they began administering these injections. Also, that the family would know things from the daughter/nurse that other families might now know -- such as there was nothing in particular about her mother that would explain her death or that she did not and would not have consented.

I question the expert pathologist report that morphine cannot be measured days after death. I call BS on that one. Such measurements must be done all the time. The other experts had no problem with the measurements that were obtained. If adjustments need to be made, I am sure that they are routinely done. And, of course, the lethal effect is not just the dose of morphine but the doses in combination with the Versed.

Based on a regular stream of information, I feel quite comfortable in my opinion that Dr. Pou killed these patients because she was asked to and expected to by hospital (Tenet) administration and because she really didn't think that this group of patients whom she had "reverse triaged" (her term -- "marked for death, my term) needed to go on living and this was the best chance anyone would have to make that happen.

[Iwo Jima]

Tenet should have moved their own patients as HCA did, but instead they waited on "free" transportation from the government. And Tenet did not tell anyone that they were going to start killing patients due to a perceived inability to transport them.

But even if what you say is true, it is no excuse for killing the patients.

[Old Student]

“Based on a regular stream of information, I feel quite comfortable in my opinion that Dr. Pou killed these patients because she was asked to and expected to by hospital (Tenet) administration and because she really didn’t think that this group of patients whom she had “reverse triaged” (her term — “marked for death, my term) needed to go on living and this was the best chance anyone would have to make that happen.”

In other words, you’ve made up your mind, and no stinking facts are going to change it.

[Iwo Jima]

I didn't go to medical school. What's your point? Are only the "anointed" physicians allowed to have an opinion on this topic? Don't look now but the grand jury probably didn't to medical school either, nor will the civil or criminal juries have done so.

Doctors are just going to have to get used to having your decisions reviewed by lesser mortals.

Where did you go to medical school? That's not the first, second, or hundredth time I've asked that question.

The encounter with the hospital administrator and the staff about killing the patients has been reported without contradiction. That "healthy young male doctor" you refer to was a Dr. Barrett IIRC. He left after attending that meeting and refusing to participate. He reported it to the authorities.

Should he have left? I would say no. But he didn't kill any patients, he at least has that going for him.

[Iwo Jima]

We do know that information that the jury DIDN’T receive — testimony from the five medical experts whose opinions were the basis of the charges. Now why do you think that happened?

[Iwo Jima]

Hysteria and panic does not excuse killing patients.

And sending away the nurse/daughter of the 90 year old patient is very telling to me. You would have thought that they would REJOICE at having her there.

[Mamzelle]

Did they get the written reports of the five "experts"? I don't know. Do you?

[Iwo Jima]

What was the doses of morphine and versed found at autopsy?
The reference to morphine that you are referring to was to a documented dose in the MAR which is not the doses in question.

[ken21]

yeah,

disgusting.

and the dems that run the media can’t figure out why people are jaded on new orleans.

the place is run by thugs.

there was a slew of katrina news articles these last days,

ordained by the media.

[Iwo Jima]

I will continue to evaluate all reported facts and am quite capable of changing my mind when the circumstances call for it. But everything that I hear about this case reinforces my opinion. Expecially Dr. Pou's accounts.

Do you have an opinion about this matter? Or am I the only one who is supposed to withhold forming an opinion until I am given "permission" to do so?

[Iwo Jima]

No, I don't, do YOU?

I do know that if you want laymen to believe an expert you bring him live to testify especially since a grand jury can actually ask him questions. On the other hand, if you don't want the the jury to believe the expert, you read/give his report to them.