Patients put down

September 12, 2005

   DOCTORS working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically
ill patients rather than leave them to die in agony as they evacuated.

With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the
flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give
massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it
out alive.

One New Orleans doctor told how she "prayed for God to have mercy on
her soul" after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended
the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.

Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly
and by local government officials.

One emergency official, William Forest McQueen, said: "Those who had
no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a
dark place to die."

Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana and the doctors spoke only on
condition on anonymity.

Their families believe their confessions are an indictment of the
appalling failure of US authorities to help those in desperate need
after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, claiming thousands of lives
and making 500,000 homeless.

"I didn't know if I was doing the right thing," the doctor said.

"But I did not have time. I had to make snap decisions, under the most
appalling circumstances, and I did what I thought was right.

"I injected morphine into those patients who were dying and in agony.

"If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose.

"And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul."

The doctor, who finally fled her hospital late last week in fear of
being murdered by the armed looters, denied her actions were murder.

"This was not murder, this was compassion. They would have been dead
within hours, if not days," she said.

"What we did was give comfort to the end. I had cancer patients who
were in agony. In some cases the drugs may have speeded up the death
process.

"We divided the hospital's patients into three categories: Those who
were traumatised but medically fit enough to survive, those who needed
urgent care, and the dying.

"People would find it impossible to understand the situation.

"I had to make life-or-death decisions in a split second.

"It came down to giving people the basic human right to die with
dignity.

"There were patients with 'do not resuscitate' signs. Under normal
circumstances some could have lasted several days. But when the power
went out, we had nothing.

"Some of the very sick became distressed. We tried to make them as
comfortable as possible.

"The pharmacy was under lockdown because gangs of armed looters were
roaming around looking for their fix.

"You have to understand these people were going to die anyway."

Mr McQueen, a utility manager for the town of Abita Springs, half an
hour north of New Orleans, told relatives that patients had been "put
down", saying: "They injected them, but nurses stayed with them until
they died."

Mr McQueen, who worked closely with emergency teams, added: "They had
to make unbearable decisions."

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,16566858-5001022,00.html