LA - Hurricane Katrina, Doctors Euthanized Patients?, 2005

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Hopefully the judge won't have to become involved - an investigation can find if there is any need for any charges or not. They were in such a horrible situation, and if they acted to prevent suffering in a certain death situation, they shouldn't be charged - they should be thanked.
 
I just don't know how I feel. On one level it is responsibility gone amuck. On another it is the sheer desperation. I know that this was one of the things that have changed me forever. The horror of it all. I can't get past that New Orleans is not New Orleans. I can't get past that I have seen so much. But, a city is destroyed. I am pretty broken with so many heartbreaks but this is one that I never thought would happen.
 
What I can see is if it's the medical personel in an impossible situation. The water is rising, the power is nearly gone or gone. They have the critically ill who require machines that require electricity to run. These people are going to die - no question, no hope. But there may be enough of that dying person left to know they are dying, to be in pain for their last remaining hours or minutes. That is when I can really see euthanasia. They have to focus on those they can save.

The medical personell stayed when they were in danger, manually pumped air for hours on end when the power turned off on the ventilators, given what I know they did for the patients, I'm sure anyone they resorted to euthanasia for needed it.
 
Yeah, Details, where does the pain end? It is so heartwrenching I just don't know where to start a discussion. Other areas I am game but not this. I wish we had never had the opportinity to look at this at all. I guess you can see I am not over this at all.It is too painful. Sometimes in our lives we can't be totally involved.It is something that is out of the box. I see a lot of pain and without resolve. I am impotent. There is nothing I can do.
 
I feel the medical profession acted in the best interest of there patients. If they go investigating the Drs who were stranded / without medicine / without the proper equipment / without food & water what in the name of God is this country coming too?

Our own government turned there back on these people. There was no help for many days. Then again I feel the government has to crucify someone for the mess.......where were the supplies? generators / meds to keep them alive?

They did more then our government! I've never in my life ever felt so helpless as I did watching that mess unfold in New Orleans. You'd of thought we were a 3rd world country for heavens sake.
 
concernedperson said:
Yeah, Details, where does the pain end? It is so heartwrenching I just don't know where to start a discussion. Other areas I am game but not this. I wish we had never had the opportinity to look at this at all. I guess you can see I am not over this at all.It is too painful. Sometimes in our lives we can't be totally involved.It is something that is out of the box. I see a lot of pain and without resolve. I am impotent. There is nothing I can do.
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There is nothing to discuss really on this one - we simply don't know the entire situation right now - not even for certain if it happened or not. Good luck in getting over this - in your own time, and your own way.

To me, the euthanasia, as well as the other facts that have come to light about the worst of the criminal activities (the rapes, murders, etc.) being mere rumors, as well as the wonderful things that many citizens did - it all leaves me with a lot of a positive feeling about how good, how self-sacrificing people really are when the worst happens. The worst will always happen, but how we respond to it makes the worst situation a tale of hope.
 
Details said:
There is nothing to discuss really on this one - we simply don't know the entire situation right now - not even for certain if it happened or not. Good luck in getting over this - in your own time, and your own way.

To me, the euthanasia, as well as the other facts that have come to light about the worst of the criminal activities (the rapes, murders, etc.) being mere rumors, as well as the wonderful things that many citizens did - it all leaves me with a lot of a positive feeling about how good, how self-sacrificing people really are when the worst happens. The worst will always happen, but how we respond to it makes the worst situation a tale of hope.
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From talking to people I know in the city, the rapes and murders were real enough, but didn't involve the people reported. There are a disturbing number of dead bodies that have turned up with bullet holes in them that were not readily ascertainable until autopsy. I personally know of 3 women who were raped on the streets of the city (not the Superdome), one of them being the daughter of one of the Neville Brothers. It will be years before the true story of what happened in the city finally emerges.
 
BillyGoatGruff said:
From talking to people I know in the city, the rapes and murders were real enough, but didn't involve the people reported. There are a disturbing number of dead bodies that have turned up with bullet holes in them that were not readily ascertainable until autopsy. I personally know of 3 women who were raped on the streets of the city (not the Superdome), one of them being the daughter of one of the Neville Brothers. It will be years before the true story of what happened in the city finally emerges.
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''This is really upsetting. It is really upsettling. I don't doubt you for a minute and I don't doubt the stories coming from the city are true. I think this is going to be another black hole on society.
 
I'm very, very torn by this story. if the patients who were 'euthanised' had no chance of riding it out under the extremely exceptional circumstances Katrina brought, i have no hesitation in feeling possible 'mercy killings' to aleiviate suffering which would inevitably lead to death due to help not being available was the RIGHT thing to do.

i would hope if it were me, someone would put me out of my misery in that situation under all the circumstances .

in actual fact it would seem i'm not torn at all, am i.

what do you feel about the story TaylorJ4?
 
Wanna know the truth?

Memorial Medical Center is a State run hospital. My wife works for HCA which had several healthcare facilities in the area.

Wanna know the difference?

My wife's hospital had significantly planned for just such an occasion. They planned for the worst and when it came, they were prepared. The commondeered a fleet of helicopters, set up a company command and control center, and even set up their own radio based communications center for command and control of the evacuation. Not one life lost.

The State run hospital.....people died and others were apparently purposefully killed.

This is the same government (State and Federal) that want to take over your healthcare!

Cal
 
Bottom line, they played G-d and it was wrong. I am certainly not on the side of forced killing, esp under the guise of mercy.
 
Well, I've been a nurse for 20+ years and I can tell you from experience that there are worse things than dying...

Helping someone who is dying a slow, painful death is one thing, killing someone is another. I guess I'd need to know more details before judging anyone.

Shannon
 
calus_3 said:
Wanna know the truth?

Memorial Medical Center is a State run hospital. My wife works for HCA which had several healthcare facilities in the area.

Wanna know the difference?

My wife's hospital had significantly planned for just such an occasion. They planned for the worst and when it came, they were prepared. The commondeered a fleet of helicopters, set up a company command and control center, and even set up their own radio based communications center for command and control of the evacuation. Not one life lost.

The State run hospital.....people died and others were apparently purposefully killed.

This is the same government (State and Federal) that want to take over your healthcare!

Cal
Click to expand...
Which hospital is it that your wife worked at? I'm surprised that if your wife worked in New Orleans, she didn't know that Memorial was a private hospital. I grew up several blocks away from that hospital and my father practiced there for 35 years. It has never been run by the government. It was originally a private hospital named Southern Baptist Hospital, merged with the local Mercy hospital in the 1990's, and was eventually bought by Tenet which is a private healthcare corporation. Tenet, incidentally, is selling Memorial along with a couple other New Orleans-area hospitals on which they have been losing money, to Oschner Clinic, which is another private group. Charity Hospital was the hospital that was "state-run" and staffed by LSU and Tulane medical centers, and from all reports, the conditions there were worse than at Memorial.

I spoke with my dad today about the charges, and he and almost everyone that he knows who worked at Memorial are extremely upset about the arrests. Apparently the two nurses who are charged are well known as good nurses and good people. Their lawyers had been told repeatedly that if any arrests were to be made, it would be done through the attorneys and they would have the chance to turn themselves in. Instead, 5 squad cars were sent to one of the nurses' homes shortly before midnight. Her husband and teenage child were forced to stand on the lawn and watch her get handcuffed and driven away in a police car. Her home is now surrounded by media. This looks to me like grandstanding, as if it has been deliberately designed to create a media frenzy.

I can only imagine how terrible the conditions were in that hospital after 3 or 4 days of no electricity, and frankly it's amazing to me that only 10 of Memorial's patients died (the other 20+ patients who died at Memorial were part of a separate long-term care facility that was located within the hospital, but was owned and staffed by an entirely different healthcare group--different nurses, doctors, administrators, for all purposes a different hospital). Obviously no one knows exactly what happened except those who were there, but I am strongly suspect that the medications were given to alleviate suffering, not with the intent to kill, as the bioethicist from the U. of Minnesota says at the end of this article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060718/ap_on_re_us/katrina_hospital_deaths;_ylt=AiLs9sLR4ITyrGhyzJKW87Ws0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-
 
MSM said:
Which hospital is it that your wife worked at? I'm surprised that if your wife worked in New Orleans, she didn't know that Memorial was a private hospital. I grew up several blocks away from that hospital and my father practiced there for 35 years. It has never been run by the government. It was originally a private hospital named Southern Baptist Hospital, merged with the local Mercy hospital in the 1990's, and was eventually bought by Tenet which is a private healthcare corporation. Tenet, incidentally, is selling Memorial along with a couple other New Orleans-area hospitals on which they have been losing money, to Oschner Clinic, which is another private group. Charity Hospital was the hospital that was "state-run" and staffed by LSU and Tulane medical centers, and from all reports, the conditions there were worse than at Memorial.

I spoke with my dad today about the charges, and he and almost everyone that he knows who worked at Memorial are extremely upset about the arrests. Apparently the two nurses who are charged are well known as good nurses and good people. Their lawyers had been told repeatedly that if any arrests were to be made, it would be done through the attorneys and they would have the chance to turn themselves in. Instead, 5 squad cars were sent to one of the nurses' homes shortly before midnight. Her husband and teenage child were forced to stand on the lawn and watch her get handcuffed and driven away in a police car. Her home is now surrounded by media. This looks to me like grandstanding, as if it has been deliberately designed to create a media frenzy.

I can only imagine how terrible the conditions were in that hospital after 3 or 4 days of no electricity, and frankly it's amazing to me that only 10 of Memorial's patients died (the other 20+ patients who died at Memorial were part of a separate long-term care facility that was located within the hospital, but was owned and staffed by an entirely different healthcare group--different nurses, doctors, administrators, for all purposes a different hospital). Obviously no one knows exactly what happened except those who were there, but I am strongly suspect that the medications were given to alleviate suffering, not with the intent to kill, as the bioethicist from the U. of Minnesota says at the end of this article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060718/ap_on_re_us/katrina_hospital_deaths;_ylt=AiLs9sLR4ITyrGhyzJKW87Ws0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-
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I lived down the street from Memorial back when it was still Baptist in the 1980s. It was never state run, as its name implies. I had to go there for gall bladder problems and was shipped off to Charity when it ws discovered I had no medical insurance, a sure sign it wasn't state run.

Believe me, you do not want to undergo major surgery at Charity, even in the best of times, much less in the dark with no clean water and 100+ degrees.

And for all we know, these people may have begged to be put out of their pain.
 
All I know is that I was watching the aftermath 24/7. It was devastating and heartwrenching. This is a case of having to be there. There were many abuse instances that I couldn't believe I was in America. There were just as many heroic events. This isn't a black and white case study...this is the grayest of gray.
 
I am truly on the side of the healthcare workers who were working under duress in such an extraordinary and terrible crisis. We cannot possibly know what happened, but I am hard-pressed to believe they were just murdering people because they felt like playing God. It sounds like they were attempting to relieve suffering. I think it is terrible that these charges have been brought.
 
Katrina was one of those things it's impossible to prepare for...Not all the best-laid plans could have averted some of the events. Looking back I can only stand in awe of those who continued to tend the sick & dying while putting their own needs aside. These people did the best they could under dire circumstances and for that alone, I stand in awe. I do not have the makings of a hero...but these doctor and nurses do. Those who came through this catastrophe unscathed are very, very lucky...because that's what it was - a luck of the draw.
 
cathieq said:
Katrina was one of those things it's impossible to prepare for...Not all the best-laid plans could have averted some of the events. Looking back I can only stand in awe of those who continued to tend the sick & dying while putting their own needs aside. These people did the best they could under dire circumstances and for that alone, I stand in awe. I do not have the makings of a hero...but these doctor and nurses do. Those who came through this catastrophe unscathed are very, very lucky...because that's what it was - a luck of the draw.
Click to expand...

You are a heart of hearts. Your understanding of events make you in the very unlucky in trying to get these thoughts across. Bless you for being here.
 
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