Did hospital workers kill patients trapped by Katrina?

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Did hospital workers kill patients trapped by Katrina?

Postby nomo » Thu Dec 22, 2005 2:35 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>More than one medical professional is under scrutiny as a possible person of interest in an investigation into allegations that hospital workers resorted to euthanasia in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina shattered New Orleans, a source familiar with the investigation has told CNN. The investigation is looking into the possibility that medical personnel at the hospital were afraid of anarchy in the city, feared they could be the next targets of violence and were simply growing tired of horrible conditions inside the hospital, CNN has learned. <br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/21/katrina.hospital/index.html">www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/21...index.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Did hospital workers kill patients trapped by Katrina?

Postby Col Quisp » Thu Dec 22, 2005 4:11 pm

I remember reading about this a while back -- but I can't find the article now. I might have posted a link to it in the Katrina thread. It was horrifying!<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Did hospital workers kill patients trapped by Katrina?

Postby Col Quisp » Thu Dec 22, 2005 4:18 pm

They should investigate FEMA for killing people -- not with euthanasia but by negligence. Here's a snippet from the post I mentioned:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm34.showMessage?topicID=127.topic">p216.ezboard.com/frigorou...=127.topic</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br> Doctor says FEMA ordered him to stop treating hurricane victims<br>By LAURIE SMITH ANDERSON landerson@theadvocate.com<br>Advocate staff writer<br><br>In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn't registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.<br>"I begged him to let me continue," said Perlmutter, who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. "People were dying, and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers. Two patients died in front of me. <p></p><i></i>
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re: Comment

Postby StarmanSkye » Thu Dec 22, 2005 6:07 pm

How utterly, criminally outrageous -- Having created an intolerable, horrific situation of gross and deliberate malfeasance compounded by unreasonable, inflexible and insufferable bureaucratic 'requirements', in which the much-too-few chronically overworked and ill-supplied medical professionals were forced to do the best they could to alleviate immense suffering by implementing a drastic kind of life-or-death Triage, the whole FEMA organization and especially its top 'leadership' should be rigorously investigated and indicted -- imagine, they turned away literally thousands of volunteers because they weren't properly 'registered', or otherwise under FEMA's direct management. This is nothing less than an example-in-travesty of 'laws' used to undermine the rule of law, and bureaucracy used to confound the active principle of people directly helping people. How DARE FEMA confound and frustrate the very best, generous gestures of help and compassion as they did in so MANY instances (for instance, First-responders Doctors from California and Firemen/Medical technicians from NY and Gulf Coast boatmen with their own boats, all made to 'wait' or stand-down in motels because FEMA was too disorganized/inept/stupid to allow them to go where they knew they were needed, because FEMA didn't itself think to know where they were needed and could be useful.)<br><br>This boils my blood.<br>The criminal thugs in the gummint corporatocracy have used FEMA to demonstrate how helpless and inept communities' self-help can be made when the bureaucrats interfere -- using people against their own self-interest. If this isn't the most awful kind of betrayal and duplicity I don't know what else is. <br><br>Starman <p></p><i></i>
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A tragedy not a crime

Postby GDN01 » Thu Dec 22, 2005 8:25 pm

I can honestly say that even IF doctors and nurses decided to administer life-ending meds to patients in these horrible conditions, I personally feel it should be handled as a tragedy, not a crime. <br>I saw a story on this on CNN in the last day or two, and some people made some awful accusations about what might have happened in these hospitals, suggesting sick people were killed who were not near death, and that it was done out of selfishness rather than a wish to end the suffering of some. But no one had actually seen a patient injected.<br><br>There is no way for anyone who did not live through that experience to even begin to grasp what it was like. Some suggest patients' lives were ended, at the earliest, three days after the hurricane. Three days of utter hell are enough to cause mental breakdowns. This was three days of no electricity, no water, in extreme heat, with people on the verge of death all around, as well as people dying. Doctors and nurses were bagging (forcing oxygen into people's lungs) people by hand - for days - just to keep them alive. I can imagine reaching a point that I just couldn't do it. Patients were beginning to die of dehydration - even ones that had not been on their death beds before the storm, and that is one of the worst kind of deaths there is - it is slow and painful. And these medical professionals had to think, I would imagine, about their own survival. They could make it out on their own - wade through the water or whatever - but they couldn't take the patients with them. So again, I can imagine reaching a point where even survival instincts kick in and thinking if the patients' deaths are hastened, then I could leave and possibly stay alive. And if I left, with the patients still living, they would die anyway, and suffer lots more. <br><br>These are just all possibly scenarios I can imagine, besides the obvious of wanting to end suffering and feeling it was the most humane thing to do. And who knows what else would run through your mind in the nightmare they experienced. What ever the reason, if medical professionals decided to administer drugs that ended the lives of the patients - in those circumstances - I think they were doing the best they could in the moment. And I would want someone to end my life, if I were a patient trapped in those circumstances, and suffering. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: A tragedy not a crime

Postby Col Quisp » Thu Dec 22, 2005 8:31 pm

GDN01: I agree with your comments. I keep scratching my head trying to remember where I stored another email I got from a listserv soon after the hurricane, which described morphine being administered to patients to end their suffering. It would be difficult to be in that position in such extreme circumstances. <br> <p></p><i></i>
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voices in my head

Postby firstimer » Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:21 pm

Where are these people who know better than me when it is my time?<br><br>I'm not talking about Mossad Kidon unit!<br><br>Who has time to worry so much about everybody elses life cycle.<br><br>Personally, I have a hard time being willing to spend my preciously misguided spiritual brain cycles, as patheticly slow and arythmic as they are, on anybody besides myself and a few of the closest voices in my head. Just a few, you see, not all of them. <br><br>firstimer<br> <p></p><i></i>
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