Arrests in Memorial Medical Center Katrina Deaths
During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina thirty-four patient deaths at the New Orleans Memorial Medical Center raised suspicions of mercy killings. Rapid investigation of the bodies was delayed by their decomposition. Today they have arrested a doctor and two nurses and charged them with “principal to second-degree murder.”
According to Fox News, conditions were bad at the center after Katrina:
Memorial had been cut off by flooding as the Aug. 29 hurricane swamped New Orleans. Power was out in the 317-bed hospital and the temperatures inside rose over 100 degrees as the staff tried to tend to patients who waited four days to be evacuated.
Even so, it certainly doesn't sound like things were so dire that mass euthanization of thirty-four patients was justified in those four days.
One has to wonder what it would take to justify such a thing. Perhaps no hope of rescue and constant suffering would be key justifications. Perhaps the doctors and nurses were watching the pronouncements of doom in the major media at the time and came to that grisly conclusion. Most of those pronouncements, of course, just weren't true.
Does that mean the cliché “Society is to blame” is actually true in this one?
Josh Poulson
Posted Tuesday, Jul 18 2006 08:48 AM
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