Horrifying Details Of Mercy Killings In NOLA?

The following allegations have been swirling around since Katrina came ashore. Is there substance to the allegations? Quite possibly:

National Public Radio now reports on its access to court documents in the case. In a February 16 report, NPR says it has reviewed secret court documents related to the investigation and not yet released to the public. The documents, says NPR "reveal chilling details about events at Memorial hospital in the chaotic days following the storm, including hospital administrators who saw a doctor filling syringes with painkillers and heard plans to give patients lethal doses. The witnesses also heard staff discussing the agonizing decision to end patients' lives."

The allegations revolve around a group of patients left on the seventh floor at Memorial Medical Center. This floor was leased to a different entity, LifeCare Hospitals. According to NPR, the patients on the seventh floor were all DNR patients -- they had "do not resuscitate" orders.

The report describes the deplorable conditions in the hospital which was left without power, without sewage removal facilities, and in soaring temperatures with looters attempting to enter the hospital.

The NPR report has much more detail, including the following:

New Orleans Coroner Frank Minyard says it will be difficult to prove if lethal doses of morphine were given. As part of the investigation, he removed tissue samples for toxicology tests from all bodies found at Memorial. He would not say if he found traces of morphine in the samples.

Minyard says the bodies were not retrieved from the hospital until two weeks after the storm and were in advanced stages of decomposition. He says that undermines the accuracy of toxicology tests. "If these people had been treated for their pain prior to the storm, they are going to have it in their system. And they are sick people, and their system is not working like it should work," Minyard said.

In the absence of reliable forensic evidence, all parties say the patient charts containing morphine-dosage levels will be crucial to the case. The attorney general's office will not confirm whether he has seen them.

Meanwhile, investigators are relying on accounts by witnesses like Angela McManus, who is still waiting for answers about how her mother died. "You know, of course I don't know what God's will is," McManus said. "I don't know when he was calling her home. If he did in fact do it, OK. But if man decided that, I want to know that. My family needs peace of mind about that."

The Louisiana Attorney General is already investigating the criminal case at St. Rita's Nursing Home and other medical facilities for unexplained deaths in the course of the evacuation, weathering the storm, and the immediate aftermath. All the cases are hampered by the widespread devastation to the region, its medical facilities, and the ability to retrieve victims in a timely fashion. Also, one has to wonder whether fatal doses of morphine would be committed to paper and that the dosages contained therein would be reliable.

All in all, this horror show isn't going to end anytime soon for the families of those who may have been killed at these medical facilities.

UPDATE:
Only a couple of folks are blogging this story, which is not only a shame, but further shows that the big media outlets are still missing big stories out of the Katrina aftermath. These allegations are extremely serious and the people who were being cared for in these institutions put their lives in the hands of these doctors and nurses. They did not give them the right to be angels of death in the guise of mercy killing because the situation was untenable.

The fact is that there was an opportunity to get these people out of harms' way before Katrina came ashore, and the state and local officials failed to take the necessary steps. After Katrina came ashore, there was still a chance at getting these people to safety, but that vanished after the levees broke in New Orleans.

Those folks who are trying to get this story out: Project Katrina, In Search of Utopia, Surly's Soap Box, The Black Kettle, BettNet and Naked Came I.

Also, is the term mercy killing an accurate representation of what happened? Probably not. We're quite possibly talking about homicides, not simply assisting someone end their own life.

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