This is the one of the most disturbing stories from Katrina I’ve read.
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.
In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, 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.”
The doctor said: “I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing. 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, said: “This was not murder, this was compassion. They would have been dead within hours, if not days. We did not put people down. What we did was give comfort to the end.
Wow what a wacko.
Oh man between the nutcase religious fundamentalists and the nutcase liberal freaks this story will get UGLY. Our media is going to play it up, I can already see the “Kervokian’s presense felt remotely in NO” lines and the slow paced dirge of the news lead ins on CNN.
I believe I would have done the same thing in those circumstances. That doctor deserves to be commended for handling the situation as she did.
I wasn’t really disturbed by this story. I kind of hope if I’m ever a patient in that kind of drastic situation, a doctor will show me the same compassion.
There’s no earthly court that holds the moral right to judge these physicians. There are times you put trust in the people in harms way, and go forward. I could only hope I had a physician with the bravery and convictions to do the same for me or mine if I was in a similar situation. Find someone cut of this cloth and put them in charge, and not a flunky for payment over a political deal or contribution.
I have mixed feelings on this one, in the end, if what they chose was a humane death, then I can understand — if not, well, that’s for them to deal with, either way “…do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” – little Tolkein for the morning.
If things were as they are being told, then I too understand what that doctor did, and consider it humane and courageous. He’ll be cursed for the rest of his life, of course, but ‘after that’ maybe God will forgive him… He forgives us all…
I’ve seen people die in horrible ways just because doctors can’t handle the simple truth that sometimes patients DIE. When they’re faced with a terminally ill patient, the doctor’s reaction is always to flee as soon as he can so he doesn’t have to deal with it. I think doctors and all medical staff should be trained in providing proper end-of-life care. I’m not for euthanasia in any shape or form, but this man was in an extreme situation. He could have left them to drown (if that was the case, I don’t know the details), would that be correct of just coward?
This man will have his conscience punishing him for the rest of his life, but I think he was being compassionate. You can’t escape death, better to die with some comfort and dignity.
Nick
I guess you have no idea of what dying, in some instances, is all about. Not every death is as clean or instantaneous as usually seen on TV or movies. Quite often it involves a lot of serious pain and suffering. If you would like to die a long, lingering death, then fine, go for it. But don’t expect the rest of the planet to want the same.
In the Superdome, for a week, it was hell. Gangs ran around trying to rob and often raping. The few police inside the Superdome were vastly outnumbered. There was no ventilation, only a few dim emergency lights for illumination, water on the field, no sanitation, and no water in 100 + heat and high humidity. FEMA was nowhere in site and the local government was overwhelmed. The medical staff inside are to be praised, with thanks, for not evacuating when the hurricane approached.
Under those conditions I don’t care if it was a dermatologist or plastic surgeon. All Physicians need to be trained in emergency medicine and are expected to keep up to date. When a Physician knows that a patient will not live without certain medicine, a procedure, or fluids then there is no reason for the physician to continue to expend valuable energy on that patient. The physician should, and usually will, move on to the next patient with a chance to live. It’s called triage. In this case, the physician, knowing the survivability of the patient is not in doubt chose to end the suffering.
I commend her and all the other medical personnel that lived inside the Superdome and Convention Center for that week. America owes you and all the emergency personnel our gratitude for doing your best with what you had. To those that would find fault, then may you be the next one to find yourself in such a situation that a physician need make such a decision.
good, i would have done the same, and if i were in the patients position, i would want it done to me, i dont know why this country is so damn “moral” when we fight a war that drains our country towards its seams
If true, very disturbing.
But four days later, this story still hasn’t run anywhere outside of The Mail and Drudge.
I would like to know more about Mr. McQueen’s “credentials”. If he’s making this up, he should go to jail just like the “Farewell cousin here we are frozen” guy.
I don’t wish intense relentless suffering on anyone. Speaking for myself, I would greatly prefer death.
Jack Kevorkian rots in prison while genocidal maniacs bible-thump us into war.
If you bad-mouth euthanasia, all that shows is that you are not in sufficiently great enough misery yourself.
Remember the 9-11 victims jumping to their deaths? I have yet to hear a single anti-euthanasia busy-body condemn them.
C’mon, speak up, tell us what despicable law-breaking satanic cowards they were!