7 replies to this topic

[merlin390]

I wasn't sure where to put this so I stuck it in here. Jena feel free to move it if you need to.

Three charged in Katrina euthanasia investigation

I dont know all the details but from what I have read in this story and other stories about this and the hurricane in general I don't see where these doctors and nurses had many other choices.

no supplies
flooding
no power
100+*f inside the building
no way to evac


The patients had to be TRIAGEd and help those they could and the rest they made as comfortable as they could (granted with what amounted to lethal doses of drugs) who were dying.

[prasamin]

i okay with euthanasia if the patient agrees to it, and signs some waivers.

[merlin390]

another article

the hospital was under water, raw sewage was backing up into it, no power, no attempts to rescue the hospital admin failed to follow the manditory evac plan when dangers were impending. I will not say what the doctors did was right but given the fact the patients were dying, the conditions horrible they did bring a more humane end to the suffering rather than letting the patients lay there in pain.

"In advanced triage systems, secondary triage is typically implemented by paramedics, battlefield medical personnel or by skilled nurses in the emergency departments of hospitals during disasters, injured people are sorted into five categories.

Blue / Expectant
They are so severely injured that they will die of their injuries, possibly in hours or days (large-body burns, severe trauma, lethal radiation dose), or in life-threatening medical crisis that they are unlikely to survive given the care available (cardiac arrest, septic shock); they should be taken to a holding area and given painkillers to ease their passing"

triage

Edited by merlin390, 18 July 2006 - 05:45 PM.

[64pvolvo1800]

another article

the hospital was under water, raw sewage was backing up into it, no power, no attempts to rescue the hospital admin failed to follow the manditory evac plan when dangers were impending. I will not say what the doctors did was right but given the fact the patients were dying, the conditions horrible they did bring a more humane end to the suffering rather than letting the patients lay there in pain.

"In advanced triage systems, secondary triage is typically implemented by paramedics, battlefield medical personnel or by skilled nurses in the emergency departments of hospitals during disasters, injured people are sorted into five categories.

Blue / Expectant
They are so severely injured that they will die of their injuries, possibly in hours or days (large-body burns, severe trauma, lethal radiation dose), or in life-threatening medical crisis that they are unlikely to survive given the care available (cardiac arrest, septic shock); they should be taken to a holding area and given painkillers to ease their passing"

triage

I tend to agree with you. Unless you were there, you could not imagine what those professionals were going through. I think to second guess and criminalize their actions is an atrocity in and of itself. I had friends down there who were lost. It was bad enough for the able bodied people not to mention how horrible it must have been for the incapacitated folks in that hospital? It's not like they tied up perfectly healthy people and fed them the grape juice.
G od Dam n bleeding hearts.

[64pvolvo1800]

Indeed, unless you were there and a part of the situation you have no idea if there was a crime commited or not.

Despite the horrible conditions, or the pain that a person might be going through, no one has the right to say "This is a crappy situation, you're in pain, I'm out of supplies and the sewer is back-up, there's water everywhere, it just really sucks, and you're close enough to dead that I'm just gonna send you on your way."

Now if some one wanted a little assistance then fine... all for it. (I'd make sure I had a witness to the pt saying "I'm ready to die." if it were me).

People did survive that catastrophe, and there's probably a lot who survived that no one thought they would, and lucky for them that the ones who expected them to not make it didn't kill them. I don't know... if their going to die, just let them die, don't rush them, at least not with out their consent - which - they might have had to begin with.

How long where they there, I didn't see it. Were they there for weeks and weeks? How long before they off'd the first person?

I doubt if the professionals just decided to start "offing" the patients that weren't suffering terribly. I would only imagine it would have been the ones who were suffering a horrible death that would have been "helped out".
I just think that to second guess a team of professionals who were in the "war zone" and on the battle front, is to open a whole can of worms that cannot possibly benefit anyone in the end except the lawyers of course.
IF these professionals truly committed a crime against nature, then they are the ones who will have to live with this and be judged when their time comes in the great beyond.