Court Documents: Hospital Gave Lethal Injections to Patients During Hurricane Katrina
NPR is reporting that they’ve seen court documents that show a disregard for human life. Here’s the most stunning part of Lifesite.com’s article:
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.
I don’t know much about Lifesite.net so I won’t put alot of credence in them. That said, I do respect NPR’s reporting, though I strongly disagree with their news analysis. If NPR says that they’ve seen documents that prove this, then I look forward to these documents getting released.
More importantly, if this happened, the medical personnel who carried this out need to be prosecuted.
Not Dead Yet compared the allegations to what transpired at a New Orleans nursing home where 34 residents who were abandoned by staff drowned. “Death by drowning is easy to prove and so the owners of the nursing home are charged with 34 counts of negligent homicide,” said Not Dead Yet. “It’s unclear what will happen in the case of LifeCare medical staff. It’s hard to prove morphine medication overdoses in badly decomposed bodies.”
Let’s hope that there’s conclusive proof one way or the other. If they can prove that lives were taken via lethal injection, then the medical personnel must be brought to justice. The fact that these patients had “Do not resuscitate” orders isn’t relevant because there isn’t proof that any of these patients needed to be resuscitated.
Cross-post at LetFreedomRing
February 22nd, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Kanye West: George Bush did it!
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:59 pm
*Sigh* How can someone do this? Especially in a hospital?! It’s not like Katrina was the end of the world, help would arrive, no matter how slow. So again how can someone do this?