ATS: Officials Investigate Reports of Mercy Killings at New Orleans Hospital, page 1

posted on Oct, 13 2005 @ 11:58 PM

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The Louisiana Attorney General's office is investigating alleged "mercy killings" at New Orleans' Memorial Medical Center during and after Katrina. The hospital was disabled soon after the flooding began and lost all power. Conditions were reported to be hellish and things only got worse as time went by. A spokesman for the Dallas-based Tenet system stated that the staff did all they could to save patients given the extreme circumstances.

www.realcities.com
Louisiana's attorney general is probing allegations that patients at the city's Memorial Hospital were put out of their misery by mercy killings in the desperate days after Hurricane Katrina.

"There have been reports that doctors have been going around injecting people," Frank Minyard, Orleans Parish coroner, said Thursday.

Minyard said that as part of the investigation, his office has autopsied at least 45 bodies taken from the hospital.

It's part of a broader inquiry into the practices of 13 nursing homes and six hospitals where patients died during and after Katrina - some because of mistreatment or neglect, family members have alleged.

New Orleans internist Dr. John Kokemor was treating patients in Memorial when floodwaters rose around the hospital the day after the hurricane, the power cut out and the temperature inside soared above 100 degrees.

[...]

The investigation at Memorial, first reported by CNN, stemmed from complaints from relatives and others who had heard rumors of mercy killings, authorities said.

Among the dead taken from Memorial were 11 bodies that had been in the morgue before the storm, three people who died in the storm and were brought to the hospital, one body sent by another hospital for safekeeping and 24 bodies of frail patients in a Lifecare unit operated independently from the hospital, according to a hospital official.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

This is not an easy story to peg. Most of us would prefer not to be made to suffer needlessly under the conditions following Katrina, but the law expressly prohibits euthanasia in Louisiana. Some sources say that mercy killing was discussed, while another claims that a doctor has confessed to the fact that some patients were euthanized. Charles Foti, the Louisiana Attorney General has made a career advocating for the elderly and he is not likely to abandon these allegations anytime soon. The owners of St. Rita's Nursing home know well Foti's commitment.

Related News Links:
www.cnn.com
www.newsmax.com
washingtontimes.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
45 Abandoned Patients Found Dead at New Orleans Hospital
NEWS: Katrina - Official Death Toll

[edit on 2005/10/14 by GradyPhilpott]

Astronomer68

posted on Oct, 14 2005 @ 03:19 AM

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Grady didn't they lose their power and backup generators as well? If they did, many on life support would have died because of that--some not so quickly, but death would have been inevitable.

FlyersFan

posted on Oct, 14 2005 @ 05:45 AM

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I remember hearing on the TV news that temps inside the hospital
were 110 degrees. Considering the condition of those desperately
ill .... the heat, the lack of meds, everything ... they were going to
die a very painful death. If I were laying on a hospital bed
in severe pain with only days to live and I had to face those
conditions and possible drowning, I hope someone would ease
me along the way ...

shots

posted on Oct, 14 2005 @ 07:45 AM

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MSNBC ran a segment on this last night around 11:30 PM EST with interviews of staff members and what I saw/heard sure made me start to think big time. Real scary stuff if true.

They had a scroll on the bottom of the screen, but it went off before I could put my glasses on to read it (I was lying in bed) and I think it said one of the staff members who was questioned on this was fired, but I could be wrong since it was not real clear for me to read w/o my glasses.

[edit on 10/14/2005 by shots]

GradyPhilpott

posted on Oct, 14 2005 @ 01:21 PM

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Originally posted by Astronomer68
Grady didn't they lose their power and backup generators as well? If they did, many on life support would have died because of that--some not so quickly, but death would have been inevitable.

According to this, they lost everything.

Two days after the storm, rising floodwaters shorted out the hospital's generators and batteries, shutting down critical support equipment such as ventilators and dialysis machines, said Steven Campanini, a spokesman for Dallas-based Tenet, which owns Memorial and four other New Orleans hospitals.

www.realcities.com...

Astronomer68

posted on Oct, 15 2005 @ 12:14 AM

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Under the circumstances at the time, I can easily see where some of the staff might have felt compelled to end the suffering of some patients--LA law to the contrary notwithstanding. I, for one, would find it very difficult to watch someone suffer when there was no hope for medical help.

[edit on 15-10-2005 by Astronomer68]

GradyPhilpott

posted on Oct, 15 2005 @ 12:56 PM

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Dr. Bryant King of Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans was interviewed by CNN's Aaron Brown. The doctor was less than forthcoming, but did intimate that there "there were things done that shouldn't have been done."

CNN's Aaron BROWN: These are very sick people, people who were terminal. And these are the people that you and they, the doctors and the administrator, are sort of focused on; is that right?

Bryant KING, MD: Well, we focused on all the patients. We treated all the patients the same, with the same degree of care.

But the DNR patients that were there, they were mixed in the population with the patients who weren't DNR. We didn't separate them out and say, the DNRs are here. We gave them DNR status. But we didn't separate them out and say, sit them over here and we will take the other patients... to some area of the hospital.

BROWN: You believe patients were euthanized. Do you believe a patient who was not DNR was euthanized?

KING: I think that the patients that were on the second floor, probably, at some point, things -- there were things done that shouldn't have been done.

www.cnn.com...