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BS: Katrina Euthanasia
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Subject: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: SINSULL Date: 18 Jul 06 - 01:33 PM http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060718/ap_on_re_us/katrina_hospital_deaths A doctor and two nurses have been arrested for administering lethal doses of pain killers to dying patients after electricity was cut off, temperatures reached 100+ degrees, sanitation was non-existent. It took four days for authorities to reach the hospital although they managed to evacuate visiting relatives. More fall-out from Katrina and more scapegoats. Anyone know if there is a fund for the three to help with their legal fees? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Ebbie Date: 18 Jul 06 - 02:02 PM That was my thought too, Sinsull. How can it be called murder when the altenative was so much worse? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: katlaughing Date: 18 Jul 06 - 02:36 PM Harry Anderson, a spokesman for Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp., said the allegations against the doctor and nurses, if proven true, were disturbing. "Euthanasia is repugnant to everything we believe as ethical health care providers, and it violates every precept of ethical behavior and the law. It is never permissible under any circumstances," Anderson said. The arrogant bastard. It's okay for our pets but not ourselves?! From Greek eu 'well' + thanatos 'death'. Dying, in pain, no electricty, order to not resucitate...sounds as though they gave them dignity and relief. What else were they supposed to do, esp. without sanitary facilities. One wonders if the people charging them have ever taken care of anyone in such a state. Thanks, Sins. kat |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Stilly River Sage Date: 18 Jul 06 - 02:38 PM I remember interviews with these folks before. What a horrible choice to have to make, but I think the reasons were to provide the most humane death possible. Given the alternatives. . . |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Bill D Date: 18 Jul 06 - 02:52 PM "it doesn't have to make sense--it's the LAW!" |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: SINSULL Date: 18 Jul 06 - 03:14 PM They stood there in 100 degree heat, no water, no sanitation, no hope, knowing these people would die and they made it easier for them. Ironic that the government responsible for preventing this horror is now so quick to point the finger. Do you think maybe there are lawsuits and cash involved? More buck passing. More ass covering. I hope that if ever I find myself in a similar situation that someone is kind to me and helps me go quickly and painlessly. Damn! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: dianavan Date: 18 Jul 06 - 03:58 PM These were not ordinary circumstances and I hope that the law does not apply in this case. Seems to me that a decision had to be made and that the doctor made that decision based on professional judgement. Under normal circumstances, a doctor would not have to make that decision. It took courage to accept that responsibility. When legal guardians aren't around, professionals must act as judicious parents. If you had the choice, would you leave a child to die a lonely, slow and painful death or would you help them to die without pain? Who else, given the circumstances, could make that decision? What was the alternative? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 18 Jul 06 - 04:00 PM Someone needs to give these people fucking medals! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: jacqui.c Date: 18 Jul 06 - 04:04 PM Too right Clinton. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Sorcha Date: 18 Jul 06 - 04:44 PM OK...where do we send the $$$$? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: number 6 Date: 18 Jul 06 - 04:46 PM Maybe ... just maybe one or more of the victims didn't want to be 'put to sleep' ... where they asked? That is the issue. sIx |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 18 Jul 06 - 04:53 PM There's no indication they were capable of answering.... (Admittedly, the details at this point are thin) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: number 6 Date: 18 Jul 06 - 04:55 PM True CH ... will be interesting to see the results. sIx |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Georgiansilver Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:02 PM So you think anyone has a right to take a life if they feel it is the right thing to do? Where do we draw the line...what is the law in force for? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: GUEST,Texas Guest Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:08 PM First let me say that I attended a nursing school in the Dallas / Fort Wort area some fifteen years ago; and, while doing clinicals and working part-time as a nurse-tech I was involved with, and employed by, Tenet Healthcare (among others). While there were some very good medical staff at the Tenet facility that I was associated with (and I'm sure there are some there now) I urge you and your loved ones - PLEASE DO NOT SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION AT A TENET HOSPITAL OR MEDICAL FACILITY. Very simply put, most health care facilities in America are "for profit" businesses - Tenet is "for profit at the expense of your health." They are, simply put, out to make money and health care is secondary to that goal. I cannot elaborate any further here due to time and space, but, when I read that news article my heart just broke - and it was not a surprise to me that it happened at a Tenet facility. I assure you that this is not a sour grapes issue on my part; this has to do with quality nursing services and medical care. EVERYONE, PLEASE, BOYCOTT TENET! Most sincerely - Texas Guest |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:24 PM Ya... right.... "So you think anyone has a right to take a life if they feel it is the right thing to do?" Who said that? Doctors are supposed to swear to "do no harm" right.... Keeping people from long, debilitating, humiliating, degenerating deaths IS preventing harm No matter if the power is out and the water is rising or not...... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Georgiansilver Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:37 PM Yes they have to do whatever is in their power to keep people alive...not kill them if they think things are hopeless...... Hypocratic oath forbids the killing of patients by doctors under ANY circumstances. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:46 PM Keeping someone ALIVE for NO reason, so they can feel pain, vomit faeces and lose their minds is causing harm to that person "Hypocratic oath forbids" That which doesn't change/evolve dies... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Georgiansilver Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:54 PM So let us all go and kill someone humanely....no way..who has any right to do that? A killer is a killer whatever. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:58 PM "A killer is a killer whatever." That's pretty myopic..... Is a cop who saves a victims life by shooting a perp in the head a 'killer'??? Bull..... Are the doctors who destroy living cancer cells, trying to save a patient killers? Bull..... What did you eat last night? I'll bet it was all dead.... Are you a killer? Bull.... Have you ever SEEN the real world??? It doesn't sound like it..... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Ebbie Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:27 PM Like they say, sometimes you can't prolong a life but you can shorten death. And Texas Guest, you tell us that you can't say more because of "time and space" but I suspect that libel may also be an issue. If you can give us reason to believe you- if what you say is true - surely "time and space" can accommodate that. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Georgiansilver Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:31 PM Clinton Hammond...saving a victims life...destroying cells to save a life...killing an animal for food is not taking anothers life because you feel it is right to do so....no comparison. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:33 PM From what I've read, in some cases family members were present until shortly before death. And it sounds like some of them are the ones pressing for this to be prosecuted. It seems to me that if family members were available and euthanasia was given without involving the family members in the decision, someone has assumed far too much authority. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Georgiansilver Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:36 PM Family members, doctors, nurses, next door neighbour, a friend, the pastor, the congregation, the local shopkeeper, the window cleaner, local police officer, paramedic....who has the right to make the decision that they should die anyway? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:37 PM "is not taking anothers life because you feel it is right to do so" Oh yes it is.... you assume that it's RIGHT that someone else live so you kill something so that they can.... You assume it's better that YOU live, so you kill things and eat them At least a doctor has training and can better know a persons chances of survival and estimate what their quality of life might be should they survive.... " if family members were available" Cause untrained family members have a better grasp on things than a trained professional? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:39 PM If what Texas Guest has said is true, this sounds like staff obeying orders from above, and now the staff will get hung to dry and scapegoated for obeying orders from above (although the doctors should know better than to obey orders like those if they are in violation of the families' wishes). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:42 PM Cause untrained family members have a better grasp on things than a trained professional? Sometimes they do, Clinton. Sometimes trained professionals are just doing a job. And the law protects families in these kinds of situations. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Sorcha Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:43 PM Georgian, sorry, but I'm with Clinton on this..... We are CERTAIN that the Dr. OD'd my father with his morpine drip...and it was the RIGHT descison for him to make. Dad had a DNR order that was IIGNORED and he had to be 'alive' in misery for another 9 mos....and you now what??? NONE of us ever said a bloomin word!!!!! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Jeri Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:43 PM If it had been my mother, I'd make an effort to go down there just to thank them. I'm not sure something like that didn't happen with her, but I also knew what she thought, what she wanted. I don't believe in killing people who are inconvenient or whose wishes are unknown but would survive. Helping someone on their way out, who's miserable and has no hope of recovery, is merciful, and a heroic deed in this day and age. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:47 PM BTW, at least one of the people who died was not suffering from a terminal illness. From Sinsull's link... "Angela McManus said Tuesday that her 70-year-old mother was among the patients who died at Memorial. Her mother had been recovering from a blood infection but seemed fine and was still able to speak when police demanded relatives of the ill evacuate. She died later that day, McManus said." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:50 PM Sounds like Angela McManus' mother was "inconvenient". |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: GUEST,Texas Guest Date: 18 Jul 06 - 09:28 PM Look, the bottom line here folks is simple - Tenet had an obligation to it's patients. As a private company Tenet had an obligation to - CARE FOR THEM and to evacuate them to another Tenet facility using private means as necessary, i.e., helicopters, boats, whatever and they failed to do it. Ebbie - libel your ass - in a hospital you're dealing with people's lives not just giving an opinion about chords or whether or not someone's research on a song source is accurate or not. Chew on this for one: when I worked at Tenet they used as few RN's as they could get away with, letting them supervise as few LVN's as they could get away with and then stocking up with as many nurse tech's as they could get on the floor. Bucks man, just bucks - tech's are cheaper than LVN's and LVN's are cheaper than RN's and if you hire as few as you can for full time positions and bring everyone else in on a PRN basis then you don't have to pay benefits and all the other things. Oh, yes, one more thing - tech's have very limited training and can't "do" a whole bunch of "nursey" things and the few "nursey" things they can do must be supervised by a qualified nurse; and, LVN's have less schooling and fewer skills than RN's and can't do many RN things (yes, there are exceptions and no, we don't need all the skilled LVN's on the planet writing in to argue this point, thank you)...and...well, I think you get the picture. At Tenet you also give each nurse the maximum patient load and as the day goes on and folks are discharged well, you don't have to reduce the nurse/patient ratio to a humane level, you just send enough nursing staff home early so you're keeping the ratio up and the costs down and - making them bucks. I haven't even started guys. There's been no talk about the physicians mistakes that resulted in patient sufferage - with no disciplinary action taken; patient charges; staff reductions that lead to folks not getting necessary treatments on time - or at all. For the record I also worked at Baylor University Medical Center and many of the things I saw going on at Tenet never came close to taking place at Baylor. My bottom line here is to try to open some eyes about a health care provider who does a sub-standard job - in my opinion. I don't know you and you don't know me; but, a travesty has happened and I have had a relationship with the corporate entity in question and again, using my experience as an employee with Tenet - TENET HEALTH CARE IS IN THE BUSINESS OF MAKING MONEY FIRST AND TENDING TO YOUR HEALTH CARE SECOND - take it or leave it, your health care is your decision. Cheers,............Texas Guest |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: jaze Date: 18 Jul 06 - 09:43 PM On a normal day ,in normal circunstances, this would not have happened. These people were in extraordinary circumstances. A hopeless situation. Faced with letting people suffer horrendously in over 100 degree heat with no prospects of rescue, they did what they felt was the humane thing to do. I, as a nurse, would not want to have been in their situation. But if a family member of mine was there to either suffer and die slowly and horribly or quickly and humanely, I'd like to think that health care professionals, recognizing the hopeless situation, would choose the latter. What a horrible decision to have to make, but I do believe they did it with the best of intentions and without malice. And that should count for something in their favor. Mighty easy to point a finger when you haven't walked in their shoes. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Sorcha Date: 18 Jul 06 - 10:30 PM Texas Guest...I'm kind of afraid that ALL health care in the US is getting to that too. Jaze, I'm with you there.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 18 Jul 06 - 10:45 PM Why, if family members were able to be there, and then leave (after being ordered to leave), would it have been so impossible to evacuate the patients? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: SharonA Date: 18 Jul 06 - 10:47 PM I for one believe Texas Guest. In the Philadelphia PA area, at least, Tenet has a reputation for taking over hospitals that are in financial difficulties, sucking them even drier, and then either closing them or selling them off. Here's a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about how they overbilled Medicare and, as a result, are closing 11 hospitals nationwide. Here's an excerpt: Tenet's hospitals here have struggled financially since the company was discovered to be collecting large sums from Medicare in so-called outlier payments. Medicare made those special payments to compensate hospitals for treating the sickest and costliest patients. But the regulations for how the payments were calculated allowed hospitals to artificially boost revenue by raising charges for services. Tenet hospitals collected more than $700 million in such payments in 2002, including $108 million by its hospitals here. Once the payments were ended, Tenet's area hospitals began losing money. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: number 6 Date: 18 Jul 06 - 10:53 PM "A hopeless situation. Faced with letting people suffer horrendously in over 100 degree heat with no prospects of rescue" Katrina had trapped quite a lot of people in that situation, the young, the elderly, the handicapped ... with people in that state of hoplessness and misery, should all hope have been put aside and somehow perform a mass euthanasia to 'put them out of there misery" via what ever methods mankind has developed. sIx |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 18 Jul 06 - 11:17 PM Trying to up your post count CC? "Sometimes they do" And sometimes it rains frogs.... sometimes doesn't mean shit.. we're not talking about sometimes.... we're talking about THIS time.... "Sounds like Angela McManus' mother was "inconvenient" I elect to wait for more information before I decide.... So as not to be close-minded |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 18 Jul 06 - 11:39 PM You certainly are not in a position to know what was possible and what wasn't, Clinton. I think the investigation ought to turn its attention to the people who make executive decisions at Tenet. I don't think the people who were on the scene should be scapegoated. But I also don't think Tenet should be allowed to get away with criminal neglegance, and possibly homicide if they are guilty of it. I'm not against euthanasia generally, but this situation sounds like it's not a cut and dried case of "mercy killing". And I think it would be a mistake to sweep it under a carpet just in order to avoid scrutinizing euthanasia practices. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 18 Jul 06 - 11:41 PM So as not to be close-minded LOL That horse left the barn a long time ago. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: dianavan Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:45 AM Seems that there is alot more to this story. If the relatives were evacuated shortly before the 'mercy killings', it seems they could (should) have been consulted. It looks like they got the families to leave and then did the dirty deed. That is an entirely different situation. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Sorcha Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:50 AM Sorry..I'm still with Clinton on this...waiting on info....we shall see what we shall see.... Perchance, why didn't the Families take their 'loved ones' with them????? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 19 Jul 06 - 02:14 AM Maybe they trusted the people at Tenet. I heard an NPR report on this story a while back. If I remember correctly, the people at Tenet were not exactly honest with the loved ones about what they were up to. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Ebbie Date: 19 Jul 06 - 02:30 AM You know, that doesn't make any sense at all. I would take a lot of convincing before I believed that the hospital waited until relatives left and then dispatched the patients. That would take a level - a depth?- of concerted depravity that is not commonly found among a cross section of human beings. It is far more likely that they were 'dispatched' in a last extremity of desperation. I have not heard but I should imagine that after the patients were gone, the staff then saved themselves. Does anyone know? Surely they did not remain on the hospital premises? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 19 Jul 06 - 04:13 AM From NPR... "Angela McManus' mother had been on the LifeCare floor for two weeks before Katrina hit. Wilda Faye McManus, 78, was battling a persistent infection due to complications from rectal cancer. Angela McManus says she was given a bed next to her mother and never left her side until Tuesday, the day after the hurricane. She says nurses told her that helicopters were coming for the seventh-floor patients and that McManus needed to get to the first floor and wait for evacuation boats. Once on the first floor, McManus said, she could hear gunshots outside the hospital. She saw looters sacking a corner drug store. Many sources confirm that at this point, there were 2,000 people -- employees, patients and relatives -- trapped in the hospital. According to McManus, "The sewer lines had all backed up, and we were down there in all that stifling heat and this odor was horrendous. People were trying to get into the hospital just to get to higher ground, and they weren't allowing that... so they boarded the doors up, and we were just in there smothering all night long." By Wednesday morning, Angela McManus learned her mother had not been evacuated as promised. She rushed back to the seventh floor and said her mother's condition had changed. "She was real lethargic," said McManus. "She would talk to me, then just doze back off. I was like, 'What's going on with her?' I was just sitting there talking to her and stroking her, and she was just sleeping and I'm like, 'Something is wrong'." McManus says nurses told her that her mother had been sedated. She grew concerned because she says her mother's pain had been manageable with Tylenol and an occasional painkiller. She stayed with her mom for hours and sang gospel hymns to comfort her. According to McManus, attempts were made to evacuate other patients from the seventh floor. She recalls seeing workers desperately trying to get one woman out of the hospital, only to see that the woman died in the process. Angela McManus became seriously frightened for her mother when she overheard nurses saying a decision was made not to evacuate LifeCare's DNR patients. "DNR means "do not resuscitate." It does not mean do not rescue, do not take care of," McManus said. She tried to rescind her mother's DNR order to no avail. On Wednesday evening, two full days after Katrina hit, Angela McManus says three New Orleans police officers approached her with guns drawn and told her she would have to leave. New Orleans police confirm that armed officers did evacuate non-essential staff from the hospital. Confronted by police, McManus raced to her mother's bed. "I woke her up and I told her that I had to leave, and I told her that it was OK, to go on and be with Jesus, and she understood me because she cried," McManus recalled. "First she screamed, then she cried. And I said, 'Momma, do you understand?' And she said, 'Yes.' And she asked me, she asked me to sing to her one more time. And I did it, and everyone was crying, and then I left. I had to leave her there. The police escorted me seven floors down."" http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5219917 |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: GUEST,Texas Guest Date: 19 Jul 06 - 09:17 AM This is an event that is just shrouded thick in sadness; unfortunately, the doctor and nurses involved will undoubtedly pay the price while the administrative decision makers go free - kind of reminds me of the way a certain government is operating these days. Dear God, please bring forth the Fighting Irish football season - I need dose of reality. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Rabbi-Sol Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:08 PM Jack Kevorkian is now doing life in the slammer for murder (mercy killing). These 3 deserve nothing less. If they were acting on orders from higher up that does not make them less guilty. The Nuremberg trials proved that. Sol Zeller |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: dianavan Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:14 PM That is truly sad. It seems that during Katrina, there was alot of confusion and most people were doing the best that they could do under the circumstances. Still, Angela McManus has every right to question the circumstances of her mother's death. I'd be upset, too. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:32 PM "You certainly are not in a position to know what was possible and what wasn't" Just as much as you are CarolC... which is to say, not very much at all.... The difference between us is, I KNOW that.... "the people at Tenet were not exactly honest" You'd need it spelled out for you? Possessed of no insight, or clarity of your own?? In any natural disaster such as this, it doesn't take any great intelligence to understand that it's the very young and the very old and infirm that are going to make up the vast majority of the corpses that the survivors are going to have to clean up.... I'da figured it went without saying... "From NPR..." National Pretentious Radio..... ya... good source.... *rollseyes* Angela McManus sounds like a poor sad deluded little dupe.... Singing hymns and praying to something that isn't there..... But then again, there are a lot of her kind around.... Her mother was DNR.... and it sounds like in this case, when it came down to deciding who they could save and who they couldn't, DNR did become Do Not Rescue.... I applaud the doctor and nurses who had the BALLS to make that decision, and the guts to act on it.... Trying to imagine myself in moms shoes, I'd be grateful of the release.... And I wanna slap her for trying "to rescind her mother's DNR order", thankfully "to no avail." Had I been Angela, I'da injected her myself, and held her hand while she passed.... It's the humane and 'soulful' thing to do isn't it? Of course that's mostly in the hindsight of knowing what a shit-storm they were in the middle of.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:35 PM "If they were acting on orders from higher up that does not make them less guilty." Unlike all the people who claim to be doing it in the name of Gahwd..... What FKNING ever.... These people are heroes! As is Jack K. (Especially to all the people he helped!) What business is it of yours??? NONE! "The Nuremberg trials proved that." There ya go again, like this has anything to do with "The Holocaust".... It doesn't.... try to get THAT through your thick head..... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 19 Jul 06 - 02:43 PM Just as much as you are CarolC... which is to say, not very much at all.... The difference between us is, I KNOW that.... I don't think you do, Clinton. You're the one who is making ignorant pronouncements. All I'm doing is saying I think they should expand the investigation to include the executive decision makers. And they should. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 19 Jul 06 - 02:54 PM " I don't think you do" Just goes to show what you know ain't likely to be worth much to anyone.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: GUEST Date: 19 Jul 06 - 06:19 PM My living will includes a DNR order. If I was in that hospital with a kidney infection or something, would I have been among the patients not rescued? Or did they only leave terminal DNR patients? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: SINSULL Date: 19 Jul 06 - 08:42 PM 5 days without electricity, air conditioning or sanitation. Temperatures within the hospital reached over 100 degrees, McManus' mother was sedated - DOH! Would she have preferred they continue Tylenol for her origional pain and the suffering that followed? Did she really believe that her mother would continue to recover without basic sanitation and electricity? I pity all in this mess. I pity the dead, the families of the dead and the doctors and nurses who didn't walk away and let them die a horrible death. People also died in shelters and on the streets for lack of water, food and air conditioning. Who will be tried and convicted of those murders? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 19 Jul 06 - 08:52 PM "Did she really believe that her mother would continue to recover without basic sanitation and electricity?" Maybe she thought some ethereal "Bearded Man In The Sky" was gonna come down and wave his magic wand and save everybody.... "Who will be tried and convicted of those murders?" Same guy.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: jaze Date: 19 Jul 06 - 09:55 PM Exactly, Sinsull, couldn't the Gov't have prevented plenty of the deaths? But three people will bear the brunt of it and America will be satisfied. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: pdq Date: 19 Jul 06 - 10:24 PM Wasn't Katrina Euthanasia the Czarina of Russia? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: GUEST,Jon Date: 19 Jul 06 - 11:25 PM I don't know... I would have thought that even under the Katrina conditions, deaths caused by "unusual" administration of drugs should be investigated. From what I can gather from the report, it all seems rather "blown up" and "baying for blood" but is that just the American system anyway? I just hope the people involved do get a fair trial. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 19 Jul 06 - 11:41 PM Sinsull, they evacuated the patients from other floors, but they had an order to not evacuate patients from only that one floor. McManus' mother was not evacuated because whe was on that floor, even though she was not terminally ill. They evacuated the other floors. They could have evacuated McManus' mother, too. Guest,19 Jul 06 - 06:19 PM, at least one of the patients on the floor that was not to be evacuated was not terminal. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 19 Jul 06 - 11:46 PM Correction: the orders were to not evacuate DNR patients from that one floor. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 19 Jul 06 - 11:49 PM "According to court documents reviewed by NPR, a key discussion took place on Thursday, Sept. 1, during an incident-command meeting held on the hospital's emergency ramp. A nurse told LifeCare's pharmacy director that the hospital's seventh-floor LifeCare patients were critical and not expected to be evacuated with the rest of the hospital. According to statements given to an investigator in the attorney general's office, LifeCare's pharmacy director, the director of physical medicine and an assistant administrator say they were told that the evacuation plan for the seventh floor was to "not leave any living patients behind," and that "a lethal dose would be administered," according to their statements in court documents. According to eye-witness accounts, LifeCare's pharmacy director said that later that Thursday morning, he found Dr. Anna Pou in the seventh-floor medical-charting room. According to his statement, Pou and two unnamed nurses informed him that it had been decided to administer lethal doses to LifeCare patients. From the court documents, it is not clear where the instruction came from. When asked what medication was to be given, the pharmacy director told the investigator from the AG's office that Pou showed him a big pack of morphine vials. The LifeCare pharmacy director stated that, before evacuating, he saw Pou and the two nurses enter the rooms of remaining LifeCare patients." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: SINSULL Date: 20 Jul 06 - 12:44 PM "they"? "They" who? Didn't one critical patient die when they tried to evacuate her? Is it possible these 7th Floor patients would probably have died during the stress of evacuation and therefore were left. Is it possible that as critical as they were and as overfilled as all nearby hospitals were, there was in fact no place to evacuate them to? And we are back to: who was responsible for seeing to it that a viable emergency plan was in place for a disaster? And do we really believe that any viable plan for a similar disaster is in place anywhere in this country? Hurricane Season is upon us. Let's watch. And maybe have a lottery - which poor unsuspecting on-the-spot fool staying behind to help will find him/herself before a jury next year while the governor, mayor, president, etc. cover their asses? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Clinton Hammond Date: 20 Jul 06 - 12:49 PM I wouldn't give NPR the steam off my piss if they were on fire |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 20 Jul 06 - 12:54 PM Sinsull, I think, under the circumstances, if it was my loved one, I would rather take the chance that they might die during evacuation, but that they also might not die, rather than just kill them outright. Don't you think you would want to give your loved one at least a chance to survive? People were in the process of being evacuated from that hospital. They made an arbitrary decision that everyone on that floor with a DNR order was not to be evacuated, regardless of their circumstances. That seems more like an execution than a mercy killing to me. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: Scoville Date: 20 Jul 06 - 01:12 PM I agree that Ms. McManus has a right to question the circumstances of her mother's death but I also think that it shouldn't be assumed that her version is the only one. This sounds to me like fertile ground for ugly rumors--there's so much anger over it already, there's so much feeling about underprivileged people being abandoned, there's so much resentment that relief efforts have been such a failure, I'm afraid that EVERYONE is looking for a scapegoat. I wish I half believed that there was actually going to be a thorough, unbiased, investigation into this. Nothing in this woman's record suggests that she is a renegade or that she has ever been cavalier in her attitude towards her work or her patients. If she's going to be investigated, she deserves to have it done properly and not just to appease the extraordinarily squeaky wheels. I hope those who are after her are thanking their lucky stars they didn't have to go through it. Not just the storm, but the responsibility. Holy cow. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: CarolC Date: 20 Jul 06 - 05:57 PM I still think the people who should be under investigaion are the corporate decision makers, and not the people who were on the scene. I think that the corporate people are probably making someone take a fall for them. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: robomatic Date: 20 Jul 06 - 06:20 PM We need facts, not stories, but the NPR broadcast retold by CarolC tears at my heart. I heard a story (also on NPR)about an elderly patient being evac'ed by helicopter, and the patient's son with medication for the patient was not allowed on. Senseless. Then there's the story about the cops going through the streets of NO shooting dogs when it was clear they were pets on the loose. But this was not done everywhere. Literally hit or miss. It sounds like there was no central authority that could both make the necessary decisions and communicate them effectively. In short, it was a shapeless directionless mess and everyone is telling the tale that will put them in the best light post-facto. The Mayor of NO was a case in point of authority 'figure' with no inherent sense when it counted. As to the hospital scene, I hope facts will come out in court when the time comes. I'd hate it to be a bunch of lawyers in the comfort of 20-20 hindsight telling those in the middle of chaos what they 'should' have done now that we know what happened. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: GUEST Date: 20 Jul 06 - 07:12 PM There should have been a mandatory evacuation. There was two full days before the hurricane struck that they could have been evacuated. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: SINSULL Date: 20 Jul 06 - 07:37 PM I repeat Carol: Who are "they"? Certainly not the doctors and nurses who were left with patients suffering horribly and no aid in sight. So who should be before a jury? The people who dealt a death sentence on the ill or the ones who risked their own lives to stay behind and care for them AND see to it that they died peacefully? Euthanasia without the consent of the dying - I would not want to be left in charge. I have euthanized numerous beloved pets and it was agony but it was right. Faced with watching a loved one I respected and treasured die an inch at a time in pain, I would end their suffering. I would in the law's eyes murder them and sleep at night knowing I had done the right thing. My father was dying an inch at a time. I allowed him to be sent home with the promise of a visiting nurse knowing that he would die at home and quickly. He did and I have no regrets. Mary |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: GUEST,pattyClink Date: 20 Jul 06 - 09:14 PM Meanwhile, Bechtel and other sweetheart contractors have misspent and siphoned off jillions of dollars that should have gone to real hurricane relief and rebuilding. (yes, there are still thousands of trailers sitting in a field in Hope Arkansas, rotting, while there is no housing for workers in New Orleans or the coast). And the insurance companies are still lying, screwing thousands of homeless families out of their due because their damage was 'wind-caused' and their neighbors because it was "water-caused". For some reason our prosecutors go after the desperate petty thieves who stole some cases of beer during the chaos, some con-artists who got away with all of $2000, and these caregivers who were doing the best they could in a nightmare. But there is never a case brought against big business. Of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations. Wonder how much of the euthanasia case is about framing scapegoats to protect the hospital itself from liability for a horrible evacuation "plan". |
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Subject: RE: BS: Katrina Euthanasia From: katlaughing Date: 20 Jul 06 - 10:16 PM Bechtel is also one of the companies involved in the BIG DIG Boondoggle in Boston. Well-said, Scoville and Sins. |
