The culture of death

If the devastation of a major city, the massive loss of life, and the unimaginable heartache and misery brought about by Hurricane Katrina were not enough, it appears that medical personnel at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans may have murdered as many as four patients in the days following the catastrophe.

A doctor and two nurses were arrested last week and booked on four counts each of second degree murder. Kris Wartelle of the Attorney General’s Office said, “We’re not calling this euthanasia. We’re not calling this mercy killings. This is ... murder.”

“We’re talking about people that pretended that maybe they were God,” Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti said. “And they made that decision.”

Foti said he believed the patients would have lived through the storm’s aftermath. Dr. Anna Pou, an oncologist and an ear, nose and throat specialist, and the two nurses were accused of intentionally killing four patients ages 62 to 91 at Memorial Medical Center with a deadly combination of morphine and the sedative Versed.

Although the allegations have yet to be proven, the arrests follow an investigation in which more than 70 people were subpoenaed after rumors circulated that personnel at the hospital had euthanized patients who were in pain after the hurricane as they waited in miserable conditions.

According to news reports, the medical center had been cut off by flooding following the hurricane. Power was out in the 317-bed hospital and the temperature inside rose to over 100 degrees. It took four days for the patients to be evacuated, during which time 34 patients died. Some patients had “do not resuscitate” orders, meaning, if they neared death, they would be allowed to die naturally without the use of heroic means to resuscitate them.

This is not, apparently, what happened to the four patients the three medical personnel are accused of murdering. Samples were taken from some of the dead patients to determine if they had been injected with lethal doses of morphine, so, apparently, the medical staff had the ability to minimize the pain. Why they chose to kill the four patients, if indeed that is what happened, is part of the mystery surrounding this case.

Harry Anderson, a spokesman for Tenet Healthcare Corporation, said, “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.”

The mother of the doctor, who was arrested at her home and led away in handcuffs, said that she was “distressed about the treatment of her daughter.” One wonders if the mother has given consideration to how the families of the four patients feel about the treatment their loved ones received from her daughter and the two nurses.

Some will doubtless laud and honor the medical staff for putting the patients out of their misery. Yet, the ability to control pain was available and help was on the way. It may be that these four patients were just inconvenient to deal with under the circumstances and were dispatched because it was expedient. It will take a trial to expose the facts and the answers that are still shrouded in mystery.

Dispatching people for the sake of convenience is nothing new, of course. Barbarian and pagan peoples have been doing away with the weakest members of their societies for eons.

A child born retarded? Kill it. A child born deformed? Do away with it. The old folks getting hard to deal with? Well, if you are part of some Eskimo tribes in the past, just sit granny out in the snow and let the polar bears take her.

The Nazi regime attempted to cleanse the Reich of such undesirables as well. To the list they added retarded and deformed adults, gypsies, homosexuals, Jews, and anyone else who was inconvenient to deal with.

Even ancient Rome was not above such barbarities, doing away with some sickly and elderly people, the persistent poor, and unwanted children and pregnancies. They were all just so inconvenient.

Of course, in America, we have evolved and have become enlightened far beyond the cultures of the pagans, or of Nazi Germany, or of imperial Rome.

Enlightened, that is, except for the 1.4 million unwanted pregnancies aborted each year, the sick and elderly people with little hope of recovery who are quietly euthanized, and, of course, the unfortunate four patients in New Orleans.

It has been said that the measure of a great society is found in how it treats its weakest members. But, each day, 4,000 children, the weakest among us, are ripped from their mother’s womb, in most cases, because they are inconvenient.

Now it seems that, for whatever the reasons, four patients found a hospital, to which they entrusted their lives, to be a deadly place.

The late Pope John Paul II accused America of embracing a “culture of death.” Perhaps we are not as great as we think.