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Gold9472
09-11-2005, 06:19 PM
Patients put down

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,16566858-5001022,00.html

(Gold9472: During the Holocaust, rather than let the sick be brutally murdered by the SS, doctors would give sionide to the patients to let them die before the SS could get a hold of them. That's what this reminds me of.)

September 12, 2005

DOCTORS working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leave them to die in agony as they evacuated.

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.

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 doctors spoke only on condition on anonymity.

Their families believe their confessions are an indictment of the appalling failure of US authorities to help those in desperate need after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, claiming thousands of lives and making 500,000 homeless.

"I didn't know if I was doing the right thing," the doctor said.

"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, denied her actions were murder.

"This was not murder, this was compassion. They would have been dead within hours, if not days," she said.

"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 the hospital's 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, who worked closely with emergency teams, added: "They had to make unbearable decisions."

PhilosophyGenius
09-11-2005, 06:22 PM
Damn these niggas. Damn them all !!!

:redcreatu

Gold9472
09-11-2005, 06:25 PM
I don't know how I feel about this.

somebigguy
09-11-2005, 07:39 PM
I've put down some patients in the past, its nothing I'm proud of. I'd make comments at them like:

"Hey you, that cast on your leg makes you look fat."

or

"If you're gonna walk around in a hospital gown, either do up the back or shave your ass!!".

Stuff like that.

princesskittypoo
09-11-2005, 09:17 PM
i don't think the government should have any say in when you die. or how you die. so i opt out of this one. a medical doctor i think should have more knowledge on the subject.... being that they make life and death decisions everyday. though i would hope that they didn't make a decision with one that didn't want to die like that.

911=inside job
09-12-2005, 12:44 PM
maybe you dont understand pkp, these people were going to die anyways... it just stopped them from suffering.... the dr did the right thing....

somebigguy
09-12-2005, 01:53 PM
maybe you dont understand pkp, these people were going to die anyways... it just stopped them from suffering.... the dr did the right thing....
Yeah, but who makes the determination that they were gonna die?

princesskittypoo
09-12-2005, 03:37 PM
maybe you dont understand pkp, these people were going to die anyways... it just stopped them from suffering.... the dr did the right thing....
no i semi agree with the use of medicine in this case. but if the patient didn't have knowledge that the overdose was going to occure and kill them then i still think it is wrong. i still do not think the government should have any right to tell you how or when you should die. meaning if i or anyone wanted to commit suicide cause i had stage 4 cancer then they shouldn't have the right to tell me i have to hang around and suffer.

911=inside job
09-12-2005, 06:59 PM
i hear ya pkp... its wasnt the government doing it, it was their own doctors that did it... it was not legal by any means.... its just like what gold said about the sick jews in ww2....

rachel
09-12-2005, 10:36 PM
Didn't this situation happen in Vietnam too? I heard once that the medics had to divide the soldiers into groups of those that would make it and those that wouldn't. And the ones that wouldn't were either left or put down.

I feel sorry for the patients and the doctors. What a waste. Dz and I heard an interview with a doctor in Slidell on our way home after the storm. The doctor worked in New Orleans and Slidell (they are pretty close) and he had a lot of contact with the doctors in New Orleans. He was saying then (1 day after the storm) that when they lose power, it will be hopeless. Too many patients on ventilators, etc.

What an extremely sad and real story...

jetsetlemming
09-14-2005, 03:33 PM
I don't think its wrong if the patients knew what the doctor was doing and okay'ed it. At least it was morphine, so they went out feeling good. Cionide kills you by suffocation, extremely unpleasant.

princesskittypoo
09-14-2005, 06:19 PM
I don't think its wrong if the patients knew what the doctor was doing and okay'ed it. At least it was morphine, so they went out feeling good. Cionide kills you by suffocation, extremely unpleasant.
i kind of read cionide as codine. i'm allergic to codine and throw up as soon as it's injested.