Doctors in New Orleans Killed the critically ill.

[peach_cube]

[url="http://http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,16566858-5001022,00.html"]Disturbing[/url]

[quote] 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." [/quote]

[Paladin D]

I wonder if cases like this, it's morally permissible to do this. If the doctors didn't kill them, the patients may have suffered greatly.

[homeschoolmom]

[Brother Adam]

That makes me think of a question, in Schindler's List doctors who knew that their patients were about to be shot to death opted to give them a painless death instead. What is the moral cuplability in such a case?

[Sojourner]

I only pray I'm never in a position where I'd be presented with a decision that horrific.

[homeschoolmom]

[quote name='Sojourner' date='Sep 13 2005, 04:25 PM']I only pray I'm never in a position where I'd be presented with a decision that horrific.
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yeah, me too.

[Fides_et_Ratio]

... I'm not sure the actions were justified. Everyone is going to die, some of us may die in terrible circumstances, that doesn't give anyone the right to "speed up the process". Tough situation.

[Paladin D]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' date='Sep 13 2005, 05:33 PM']

... I'm not sure the actions were justified. Everyone is going to die, some of us may die in terrible circumstances, that doesn't give anyone the right to "speed up the process". Tough situation.
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I believe it would be a graver sin, to abandon the person to die an even more horrible death.

[Fides_et_Ratio]

[quote name='Paladin D' date='Sep 13 2005, 05:35 PM']I believe it would be a graver sin, to abandon the person to die an even more horrible death.
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Then any form of euthanasia would be justifiable... it's not about the pain... it's about life. Our life is not our own, nor any other human beings. It belongs to God and to God alone.

[Aloysius]

it is better that they suffer than be murdered. though the circumstances may be "tough" it is only because our society's values have forgotten the value of suffering and now worship comfort.

what the doctors did is as reprehensible as any euthanasia and is objectively a mortal sin. the fact that the patients would have suffered if they didn't do it doesn't lessen the culpability (whether they knew, or had ever had the oppurtunity in their life to know, that it is wrong is what would affect the culpability)

this was murder, plain and simple. you cannot kill a person to help them avoid suffering, there's purgatory suffering time left for most people on earth anyway.

[Brother Adam]

I think it is objectively better to call it Euthenasia, which is horrible in itself, than murder simply because the expressed intent is not cold-blooded maliciousness.

[Fides_et_Ratio]

but euthanasia IS murder.

[Paladin D]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' date='Sep 13 2005, 05:36 PM']Then any form of euthanasia would be justifiable... it's not about the pain... it's about life. Our life is not our own, nor any other human beings. It belongs to God and to God alone.
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Yeah. Though I can't imagine living with myself, knowing that a patient could be raped to death.

[Pio Nono]

JMJ
9/13 - St. John Chrysostom

This is a perfect case of double-effect. Let me put it this way -

Let's say that you and I are on top of a burning building, and we're not going to make it out alive. The building is about to fall down, and there's no way the firefighters can rescue us. But I pull some morpheine pills out of my pocket and say, "If we take an overdose of these, perhaps it will numb our pain to the point where we won't feel it. The only catch is, we might die in the process of numbing the pain." So long as we did not take the pills with the direct intention of causing our death, taking an overdose would be morally licit. Death is quite likely by our overdose, but we are not willing our death directly.

Likewise, if these doctors did not directly intend the death of the patients, then what they were doing was morally permitted. It is unclear whether they actually intended their patients' deaths (some quotes could go either way), so we can't judge this particular action.

My two cents.

[hierochloe]

Admittedly I only skimmed the article but it looks to me like in many cases all that was done was administration of heavy anesthesia to those in dire need. The anesthesia was not necessarily the lethal agent nor perhaps was its administration meant to be lethal.

Additionally, was it not accepted to administer the [i]coup de grace[/i] to those, friend and foe, mortally wounded on the battlefield, particularly during the crusades?