Doctor admits euthanizing patients during Katrina

Originally posted by LoneGunMan

Originally posted by Annee

Move them how?

Wheel their beds and all their life saving equipment by elevator?

The same way we move them in the F.D.

Back board, carry, light weight gurney resperate them with a bag-valve-mask and portable O2 and carry the IV lines by hand.

How do you think you get moved from a burning structure?

Its called an emergency move because if the patient is dieing then you take a chance and transport any way possible.

Its called saving lives!

Sounds easy printed on a internet forum. But you don't know the extenuating circumstances in this particular situation.

Hopefully - next time something this extreme happens - you can be there to take charge.

Originally posted by Relative Five
What if some asked to be put under? I would if I was on my death bed while hell ran wild outside.

Interesting thought. I might too.

I do not support artificial life support for adults beyond a certain point. That point would be when one is beyond having a minor depend on them.

My kids and husband have strict instructions to let me die naturally - under all and any circumstance. Give me a morphine drip and leave me alone.

reply to post by Annee

My kids and husband have strict instructions to let me die naturally - under all and any circumstance. Give me a morphine drip and leave me alone.

Well, let's hope you don't get some psychotic doctor coming in the middle of the night to inject you, gather the nurses round to pray that you go...and then smother you with a towel.

These people, according to that article were not begging to die, but expecting to live. And nobody...nobody has the right to take the life of anyone...let alone some arrogant doctor.

Originally posted by oneclickaway

Well, let's hope you don't get some psychotic doctor coming in the middle of the night to inject you, gather the nurses round to pray that you go...and then smother you with a towel.

These people, according to that article were not begging to die, but expecting to live. And nobody...nobody has the right to take the life of anyone...let alone some arrogant doctor.

Very Dramatic.

How do you know what they were thinking?

reply to post by Annee

How do you know what they were thinking?

How do you? From that report, those that were not imminently at risk of dying were fairly content.
So in lieu of a direct plea, carried out with full mental faculties intact, over a length of time because any pain could not be controlled, which was not the case....any of those deaths were murder.
And I think it is a total disgrace. Let alone that they did that, but that people with such contempt for life exist in this world.

No worries.. it's only modern health care.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/661e6560fe6f.jpg[/atsimg]

From what I can tell their are people who are for and against what this

Dr. did. What is important here is, when people can't speak, or make

their wishes known "who is held to be accountable", The person who

made the decision in the first place, whether right or wrong!!! is...imo

reply to post by Rams59lb

I understand your point of view, honestly... I'm glad you chose to agree with this Doctors statements and what he had to do but I would want the choice regardless.

I don't think you do understand my point of view...I don't necessarily agree with the doctor's choice. My point is I wish he never had that choice to begin with.

We have technologically surpassed our wisdom. We are still young yet in wisdom and have godlike choices over life and death. That should never be a burden for any human to bear. Nature/God...that was the arbiter of life and death. It is now up to a frail human to make this decision. There is no survival of the fittest. There is survival at whatever the cost to others, emotional, physical, financial. With the option of life support and critical care, of course we will take it. Death with dignity is no longer an option taken. We all crave life, naturally. I can't say I wouldn't choose to sustain the life of my child, but should I? Who knows? God used to decide that. Now, it's me.

I'm not arguing for or against life support. I'm stating that people should never have had this choice to make to begin with.

reply to post by Annee


This is a perfect example of why this should have never happened. You become the judge and jury over this persons life. This is the crux of the entire debate. You do not have that authority. You can not decide that for this person and neither can the Doctor. It is not your decision to make and when you do you commit murder. It is inconsequential the person is dying or near death. This is not idealism. Idealism would be about the decision itself. In this case, the decision is not yours to make.

Originally posted by Rams59lb
...
Hold my hand, tell me the truth, show some compassion towards me and let me decide thank you very much. No, this Doc decided he needed to "get the Nurses off the floor" those are his words so please stop the "Lets get off topic" and add more drama to an already bad situation with Katrina. Your defending a Doctor who admittingly says it wasn't about compasion it was "Geting the Nurses off the Floor"

...

And still you do not differentiate between two entirely different matters: Triage and euthanasia. Triage is what is necessary to ensure that resources are used in their most effective ways - and what has consistently been forgotten in this thread is that the first and most important resource is personnel. These people at the hospital had been working nonstop for several days with no knowledge of relief or any further idea of the severety of the catastrophe.

Triage itself is of course ambiguous in itself. What is the most efficient use of resources? Treatment of most patients? Treatment of the weakest? Treatment of the youngest, brightest, whitest, blackest patients? It is very easy to sit in front of the computer and argue semantics - Triage is an ethical sh*tcan once you open it up, but you have to open it nonetheless and make decisions in a catastrophe. And one should be grateful that there are people with the courage and professional experience to do so. And sometimes, compassion has no place where the problems are coming from all sides.

And I do not think it is ours to judge on events during extreme circumstances without even a faint understanding of these circumstances. Neither of us here has been in that hospital. In this specific case the patient was a comatose life support patient with organ failure and inevitable death within hours that needed 4 nurses to care for due to power outage, and that was stuck on the 6th floor of the hospital and unmovable because of excessive weight (~350 lbs.), while the evacuation of the hospital as underway. The rationale of the decision is clear; If you cannot save a patient AND it may harm the chances of many other patients, you do not continue to use your limited resources (as I said, personnel is a resource as well) on a hopeless case. And that is all there is to it.

I trust that this Dr Cook was fully aware of the implications of his decision, having been employed in I.C.U. in this hospital and having been exposed to life and death decisions for many years. Argueing about the compassion involved, trying to construct malice from his blunt words, is beside the point; I do not require a person to show remorse for a decision that appears to be sensible and that, frankly spoken, this man was a lot more qualified to make than any of us. In the same line of thought one could argue that the Enola Gay crew should have crashed their plane as soon as they dropped the Bomb.

----

Totally separate of the triage decision was the euthanasia; this is purely a matter of opinion. My opinion is that a person facing certain death CAN be helped over the line - that includes me and my family. I do not believe doctors are assuming the position of "judge and juror", as some have put it here, when death is inevitable. Mr Cook could have left the patient to die, and he chose not to - and maybe that was his form of compassion. One can see this whichever way. Being outraged by it however naively omits the context of that event.

----

Anyway,I advise to actually read the article in question and not base ones opinion on the very abridged abstract presented in the first post.

[edit on 30/8/2009 by Lonestar24]

Originally posted by Annee

Sounds easy printed on a internet forum. But you don't know the extenuating circumstances in this particular situation.

Hopefully - next time something this extreme happens - you can be there to take charge.

Yes it is easy.

Did you read my post where I stated we sent an Advanced Life Support rig full of Meds and fresh water and two Paramedics yet they were sent ALL THE WAY back to Michigan?

Any idea how many Cities sent ALS rigs?

The hospitals should have been evacuated first thing. I don't appreciate your condescending tone either. How many lives have you saved? I know what I am talking about, after all you depend on people like me when you dial 911.

I think you are at this point just defending your position because there have been many posts that show the way things are ALWAYS done.

reply to post by oneclickaway

The Intern was 'creating a problem'...dear God. You know, reading some posts I absolutely despair for humanity.

Agree

It is really sad when a society as advanced as we are supposed to be cannot come up with a better plan. When a disaster hits you mean to tell me the best plan AMERICANS can come up with is to kill people??, and this seems to be just fine for some people.

rawstory.com...

In the four years since Katrina, Pou has helped write and pass three laws in Louisiana that offer immunity to health care professionals from most civil lawsuits — though not in cases of willful misconduct — for their work in future disasters, from hurricanes to terrorist attacks to pandemic influenza

Why is it so hard for people to connect the dots. They are coming for you and by letting them get away with what they have done during Katrina, you have given them permission to do the same thing to you.

Blacks were hollering "police brutality for A LONG TIME NOW. No one said anything and now with videos of police brutality being released every week, we now see the results of people turning a blind eye becasue it wasn't them.

Now again, the brutalilty of Katrina will also go unheard.

it appears that at least 17 patients were injected with morphine or the sedative midazolam, or both, after a long-awaited rescue effort was at last emptying the hospital. A number of these patients were extremely ill and might not have survived the evacuation.Several were almost certainly not near death when they were injected, according to medical professionals who treated them at Memorial and an internist’s review of their charts and autopsies that was commissioned by investigators but never made public

This is WRONG. No if's and's or but's about it and if we let this fly then God help us all because we are utterly screwed and maybe rightfully so. If you accept this as okay then you deserve everything you get. You better hope someones still around to help you when it's your turn to be culled.

reply to post by Lonestar24


They turned professionals away that could have relieved those nurses.

Wake up and read what others are saying. This did not have to happen.

They turned professional emergency medical people away and sent them back home. The biggest difference between a Paramedic and an R.N. is that the Medics dont wipe your butt or give you a sponge bath.

All other duties could have been taken over by the Paramedics that were sent back home.

Originally posted by Annee
Very Dramatic.

How do you know what they were thinking?

Another simple answer.

They were in the hospital! Sheesh they were there in the fist place because they wanted to live.

When I am using spreaders and cutters to extricate a victim in a car accident because they are dieing, no matter how bad they are off, no matter how long it takes to take the car apart they always want to live.

This is not about someone that has been bed ridden and may never get better. this is not about someone wishing they could die because they are paralyzed or had most of they're higher brain functions wiped out.

This is about a Doctor that did not work hard enough to save those lives and took action in playing God and cut the life short when there were who knows how many professionals driving back to the cities they came from scratching there butts wondering why they were sent back home when they could have helped.

reply to post by LoneGunMan


I am very well capable of reading and I am also aware of the abysmal handling of the whole catastrophe on nearly every official level. I know that all kinds of aid offerings were criminally turned down, and that almost nothing of the tragedy had to happen the way it did.

But since you asked me read what other people have written, I can ask you as well to read what I have written since you took the effort to reespond. I have SPECIFICALLY written about that one case of euthanasia and the premature judging of Dr Cook; not about Dr Pou and not any of the other cases.

Now, did Dr Cook turn away the help personally? Hmm?

reply to post by Rams59lb


Doctors make those choices everyday for perfectly healthy people or for people of all states.

And yes, I have almost had doctors kill me.

Originally posted by Lonestar24
reply to post by LoneGunMan

 

Now, did Dr Cook turn away the help personally? Hmm?

In this one case I can see the point. The others I cannot.

I will admit when I feel I am wrong, sorry if I seemed to lump you in with all the cheerleaders.

Peace.

reply to post by LoneGunMan


But you are trained to get yourself and other people out of precarious situations. Doctors are not trained for that in that sense.

I doubt there is much in med schools about evactuating invalid patients out of a hospital in an emergency. I wouldn't expect a doctor to know that any more then I would expect them to be a lifegaurd and get you out of a rip current.

The staff probably didn't even know where they were going, or what to do.
Any more then anyone else. Where would they have taken them? The superdome?

The article clearly states these people were in bad shape. There was nothing they could of done for them if they had gotten them out of the building. And many would not of survived the evacuation.

People do go to the hospital to live. They also go to die a comfortable death. Or to see if there is a .005% chance they can be saved.

Reply to post by GTORick

Unfortunately in crisis situations especially with dwindling resources that is a decision doctors HAVE TO make. Must be great to judge others from your idylic ivory towers having never been saddled with such grim choices yourself.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

The daytime temp was around 100 degrees, and the humidity was high, also! So, can you imagine how high the temperature was inside the hospital? It had to be miserable, etc. Remember, also, that the water was high around the hospital. Just an all around bad situation and no help on the way!