Originally published October 14 2005
Katrina investigations examine hospitals and the fate of abandoned patients
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti is investigating the cause of dozens of deaths in New Orleans area hospitals, in an attempt to ascertain whether doctors euthanized patients.
One need look no further than the legal drama surrounding the end to Terri Schiavo's life in Florida last year, or the arguments over Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law now being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
But those cases, medical ethicists say, can't compare to the situation confronting health care professionals in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina as the water rose and the electricity went out, and no one came to help for days.
Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti told a legislative committee earlier this month that his office was investigating dozens of deaths to determine whether hospitals or nursing homes abandoned or euthanized patients, or whether mistakes were made in their evacuation.
Withdrawing treatment from terminal patients who request it differs greatly from physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.
"In the aftermath of Katrina, they were doing triage-type medicine," said Stuart Finder, senior medical ethicist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
Finder placed himself in the shoes of the Louisiana doctors.
For a frail, terminal patient even a little bit of morphine can be enough to bring death.
Louisiana's 1995 law criminalizing assisted suicide carries a maximum penalty of 10 years of hard labor, but it makes specific exceptions for physicians who withdraw treatment at a patient's request or administer drugs to ease pain and not to cause death.
Any medical professional who deliberately hastened the deaths of patients in post-Katrina Louisiana crossed the line, said Aine Donovan of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
"No one in their right mind would do that to elderly people in a crisis situation," said Donovan, executive director of Dartmouth's Ethics Institute.
Finder sees a gray area where such actions, while illegal, might be morally justifiable if a physician or nurse intended to shorten suffering in a hopeless situation.
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