The Quality of Mercy
Sep 11th, 2005 at 11:54 am by Susie
I wonder why Rick Santorum and Jeb Bush weren’t there to stop them:
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.”
UPDATE: Several people have noted the Mail is apparently not the most reliable newspaper in the world, so interpret accordingly.
Aren’t they going to prosecute that doctor for murder? Shouldn’t she be on death row with abortionists and women who have had abortions, and Dr. Kevorkian? How about the (perhaps apocryphal) eskimos (um, native Alaskans?) who put their elders onto “ice floes” (whatever those are) to die? Shouldn’t they be on death row too?
If those fucking Alaskans are already dead, dig them up, or fish them out of the bottom of the cold ocean before it warms up too much, and put them on death row too.
George W. Bush can be the judge, jury and executioner, except that he doesn’t have the guts to confront a fucking fly in his bedroom. Has to call Karl to ruin the fly’s career, then get Rumsfeld to send the fly to Gitmo, then probably release the fly back to its home country and put out a press release to say we’re winning the war on terror. But Bush is never gonna touch it himself, because he’s too chicken.
Well, the whole fucking lot of us is on death row in this life, Senator. You too. Make the best use of your time here while waiting for it, pal.
I knop I’m trying to.
I know I’m trying to.
They’ve also been shooting dogs as can be seen in this clip.
Counting the dead
James Wolcott addresses how the right is currently trying to downplay the number of casulties from Katrina in an effort to spare the Baby Prince from political harm. The punditry is in full swing on this and I think it’s…
Christ.
It’s too much like watching the towers fall. With these clowns, reality keeps intruding to let us know how much worse it really was.
This, in conjunction with the Newsweek article should topple this presidency. It won’t, but it should.
Wow. I know I’m just stating the obvious, but things should have never gotten that bad. Some of the stories are just so horrible. I can’t believe this stuff happened here. And as a Floridian, I’ve got to wonder if they would have just left us like that last year if we weren’t a critical swing state in an election year.
There are two aspects to this that deserve attention: 1) most doctors I know will privately admit that they have done similar things to provide a comfortable death to those they know are dying, but there is a code of silence, and 2) so much of the New Orleans tragedy is racist that I have to wonder if that played any role in this too.
Report: Katrina Doctors Killed Patients Out of Mercy
The Sunday Mail has an agonizing report, quoting a rescue doctor in New Orleans: 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…
Hang on a sec. A lot of Americans won’t know this but the Mail On Sunday is one of the most rabidly rightwing and racist rags in the UK. Re-read that story carefully and notice the only person mentioned by name, William ‘Forest’ McQueen, who was a winess. Then notice, near the end: “Mr McQueen, a utility manager for the town of Abita Springs, half an hour north of New Orleans”!
As far as I am aware, there were precious few “gangs of rapists and looters” half an hour North of the city.
Regards, C