Groups respond to NPR report hospital euthanized Katrina patients

[Guest guest]

" Zepp " <zepp

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 15:26:34 -0800

[Zepps_News] Groups respond to NPR report hospital euthanized

Katrina patients

 

 

 

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Groups_respond_to_NPR_report_hospital_0222.html

 

Anti-euthanasia groups are responding to National Public Radio reports

claiming that New Orleans hospitals gave patients lethal doses of pain

killers during Hurricane Katrina.

 

Rumors of patient euthanasia began to spread soon after Katrina struck,

but NPR reporter Carrie Kahn claimed in a February 16 All Things

Considered report that the news agency had reviewed unreleased court

documents relating to the attorney general's probe of Memorial Medical

Center. Memorial was surrounded by water and without power as

temperatures shot over 100 degrees in the chaos that followed Katrina.

 

According to NPR:

 

 

The documents reveal chilling details about events at Memorial

hospital in the chaotic days following the storm, including hospital

administrators who saw a doctor filling syringes with painkillers and

heard plans to give patients lethal doses. The witnesses also heard

staff discussing the agonizing decision to end patients' lives.

 

....

 

According to court documents reviewed by NPR, a key discussion took

place on Thursday, Sept. 1, during an incident-command meeting held on

the hospital's emergency ramp. A nurse told LifeCare's pharmacy director

that the hospital's seventh-floor LifeCare patients were critical and

not expected to be evacuated with the rest of the hospital. According to

statements given to an investigator in the attorney general's office,

LifeCare's pharmacy director, the director of physical medicine and an

assistant administrator say they were told that the evacuation plan for

the seventh floor was to " not leave any living patients behind, " and

that " a lethal dose would be administered, " according to their

statements in court documents.

 

NPR reports that attorneys for LifeCare, which leased the hospital's

seventh floor, reported these incidents to the attorney general on

September 14.

 

According to eye-witness accounts, LifeCare's pharmacy director said

that later that Thursday morning, he found Dr. Anna Pou in the

seventh-floor medical-charting room. According to his statement, Pou and

two unnamed nurses informed him that it had been decided to administer

lethal doses to LifeCare patients. From the court documents, it is not

clear where the instruction came from. When asked what medication was to

be given, the pharmacy director told the investigator from the AG's

office that Pou showed him a big pack of morphine vials. The LifeCare

pharmacy director stated that, before evacuating, he saw Pou and the two

nurses enter the rooms of remaining LifeCare patients.

 

Anti-euthanasia group Not Dead Yet issued a statement claiming that,

" The only way the staff could evacuate was if they could report there

were no more living patients to take care of. This was not about

compassion or mercy. It was about throwing someone else over the side of

the lifeboat in order to save themselves. " The group adds that

Memorial staff " must have been exhausted and scared. "

 

LifeSite.net has also taken an interest in the story, quoting CNN and

newspaper accounts of other medical professionals who opted to simply

" abandon patients rather than actively kill them. "

 

Thus far, no one has been charged over allegations of euthanasia in

Memorial or any other New Orleans hospital in connection with Hurricane

Katrina.

 

 

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