Monday, September 12, 2005

Oh my god.

Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

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.

In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, 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. [...]

The doctor said: “I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing. 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.”


(Via Surburban Guerilla)

I say it again: This is what we did.

2 comments:

Becky L said...

Is this story for real? I cant believe something like that would be done.
i'm glad i'm not a doctor.

Ben Varkentine said...

The consensus seems to be that it's true. The only reason I've seen for some skepticism is that the Mirror, some have said, is "not the most reliable newspaper in the world."

If it turns out to be false I'll be sure to post a correction. I'm glad I'm not a doctor too, or anyone who had to make such a terrible decision.