[Marxism] New Orleans: "We had to kill our patients"

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here is an important article that Walter Lippmann made available on the
CubaNews list.  I had heard some versions of this before, hinted at or
reported in passing.

While I am opposed to the demagogic "right-to-life fanatacism" pushed by
the Bush administration, I am firmly opposed to any kind of generalized
"right to die" for the terminally ill, comatose, badly disabled,
extremely elderly, and so on. And frankly, there are bad signs about the
circumstances of these decisions.

I am caught by the phrase "with gangs of rapists and looters rampaging
through which hospital wards in the flooded city".  Did this alarming
circumstance actually exist?  What gangs of rapists? What rapes?

Has any of this been confirmed?  Do doctors have the right to kill
patients because they are caught up in a racist hysteria being whipped
up by the media against the oppressed in New Orleans. 

All the evidence is that these claims were largely mythical.

Did the patients ask to die?  Did any of them do so? 

"These people were going to die anyway" is not a justification for
euthanasia.  Of course, we are all going to die "anyway." 

The possible element of racism here doesn't change even if some of the
doctors were Black and some of the euthanized patients were white. The
killings may have been a product of a racist atmosphere being whipped up
against the Black working people of New Orleans.

Doctors should not be permitted to make such decisions with any such
considerations in mind.

Let me express my doubts that medical procedures in Cuba would
countenance any of this. And I think, unless the circumstances are quite
different than explained here, they absolutely should not be
countenanced here.

Whatever one thinks of Louisiana's anti-euthanasia law, it seems to me
that some second-degree murder or at least manslaughter prosecutions are
in order for these panic-stricken (speaking here in the doctor's
defense) but quite likely criminal actions.
Fred Feldman  


(Francisco Aruca spoke about and read this amazing story, which has not
been picked up in the US mainstream media, on his program for Friday
September 23, which you can still listen to via the Progreso Weekly
site:
<http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=listen&otherweek=11279
70000> 
Given the fanatical right-to-life fanatacism which characterizes the
Bush
administration, it's no wonder no one on the US media seems to want to
touch this story with a ten-foot pole. But you really should read it.)
===============================================
Progreso Weekly
We had to kill our patients
By Caroline Graham and Jo Knowsley
Reprinted from The Mail on Sunday
<http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Caroline_Graham_Jo_Kno
wsley&otherweek=>

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.

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 Mail on Sunday is
protecting the identities of the medical staff concerned to prevent
them being made scapegoats for the events of last week.

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

'These people were going to die anyway'

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."

The doctor, who finally fled her hospital late last week in fear of
being murdered by the armed looters, said: "This was not murder, this
was compassion. They would have been dead within hours, if not days.
We did not put people down. 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 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 has been working closely with emergency teams and added:
"They had to make unbearable decisions."

Find this story at
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_articl
e_id=361980&in_page_id=1770>

©2005 Associated New Media







________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism