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Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1133
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 04:11 pm: | 
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Doctor, 2 nurses held in Katrina deaths
Arrest order says morphine used, second-degree murder charges filed
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:09 p.m. CT July 18, 2006
NEW ORLEANS - A doctor and two nurses who worked through the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina were arrested overnight, accused of giving four patients stranded at their hospital lethal doses of morphine and a sedative, authorities said Tuesday.
“We’re not calling this euthanasia. We’re not calling this mercy killings. This is second-degree murder,” said Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Charles C. Foti.
The arrest warrants say Dr. Anna Pou and the two nurses intentionally killed four patients at Memorial Medical Center “by administering or causing to be administered lethal doses of morphine sulphate (morphine) and midazolam (Versed).”
In an accompanying affidavit, an agent for the Louisiana Justice Department wrote that Pou told a nurse executive three days after the hurricane hit that “lethal doses” would be administered to those patients who could not be evacuated.
Pou said the patients remaining at the hospital would likely not survive and that a “decision had been made to administer lethal doses” to them, the affidavit says.
“’Lethal doses of what?”’ the nurse executive asked, according to the affidvit says. It says Pou answered: “morphine and ativan.”
34 deaths at hospital
Two months after the hurricane, the attorney general subpoenaed more than 70 people in an investigation into rumors that medical personnel at Memorial Medical Center had euthanized patients who were in pain after the hurricane as they waited in miserable conditions for rescue.
Pou’s lawyer, Rick Simmons, said his client is innocent, and her mother said she was distressed by her daughter’s arrest.
“Medicine was the most important thing in her life and I know she never ever did anything deliberately to hurt anyone,” Jeanette Pou said in a telephone interview.
Memorial Medical Center had been cut off by flooding after the Aug. 29 hurricane swamped New Orleans. Power was out in the 317-bed hospital and the temperatures inside rose over 100 degrees as the staff tried to tend to patients who waited four days to be evacuated.
At least 34 patients died there during that period, 10 of them patients of the hospital’s owner Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. and 24 patients in a facility run by LifeCare Holdings Inc., a separate company.
Deaths listed as ‘Katrina-related’
After the bodies were recovered, Orleans Parish coroner Frank Minyard said they were so decomposed the deaths could only be listed as “Katrina-related.”
He later said samples had been taken from dozens of patients who died at various hospitals and nursing homes to test for potentially lethal doses of drugs such as morphine.
In a December interview, Dr. Pou had told Baton Rouge television station WBRZ: “There were some patients there who were critically ill who, regardless of the storm, had the orders of do not resuscitate. In other words, if they died, to allow them to die naturally, and to not use heroic methods to resuscitate them.”
“We all did everything in our power to give the best treatment that we could to the patients in the hospital to make them comfortable,” Pou said then.
Tammie Holley, an attorney representing about a dozen families whose relatives died at Memorial, says the presence of the sedative in addition to morphine is important in determining whether hospital staff intended to kill a patient. Midazolam is used to induce unconsciousness before surgery, according to a medical Web site.
“If it was only morphine, there would be no way to know if they were administering it to control their pain,” Holley said.
'Euthanasia ... never permissible'
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.
In addition to Pou, nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo were arrested and later released on personal recognizance bonds, officials said.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Landry and Budo had attorneys who could comment.
Simmons said Pou was arrested and handcuffed at her house late Monday night.
“I told them that she is not a flight risk. I told them that she would surrender herself. Instead, they chose to arrest her in her scrubs so that they could present her scalp to the media,” he said.
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.
“At least now I’ll be able to get some answers,” McManus said. “For months, I haven’t known what happened to my mom. I need some answers just to be able to function.”
Tenet said Tuesday it is selling the now-closed Memorial Medical Center and two other area hospitals to Ochsner Health System, a sale expected to be completed by Aug. 31.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13916867/?GT1=8307
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 5164
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 05:50 pm: |
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I think that this might be an unfornately CONVENIENT bit of Monday Morning Quarterbacking. I mean, I generally am against Euthanasia. This was just a horribly unique situation. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 921
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 07:26 pm: |
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If you weren't there in the middle of it, you would have no way to know what happened and why it happened. No running water, no electricity, no transportation, no communication, and no help from anywhere. In my opinion, if the doctors administered lethal doses of morphine, they did it in the best interest of the patients. It's not murder and that charge will not stick. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 5167
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 09:27 pm: |
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Mzuri,
Unless I hear or read something that very CREDIBLY asserts the contrary, I tend to agree. Because it seems like for many, Katrina sorta turned into a warzone. And in war, people make decisions and take actions that those of us who have never been in such a situation can never fully appreciate and understand. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 2477
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 11:58 am: |
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They should have done the Christian thing and left them to die slowly in agony, starving to death.
That's what I'll do if I get in the same situation. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 5170
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 12:12 pm: |
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I wonder how many of those who have charged, indicted and will try these people were THEMSELVES trapped somewhere in the midst and aftermath of Katrina. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 922
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 01:13 pm: |
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I was thinking about this matter earlier today while I was out running errands. Isn't it better to die with dignity and respect than to be left helpless in those deplorable conditions? This is going to be one compelling trial.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 5178
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 01:56 pm: |
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These, presumeably, are civilian doctors and nurses. Have they been trained to handle a situation that even remotely close to that of what occurred in the wake of Katrina?
What about the other foks who were presumed to have a better chance of surviving? What if someone concluded that they'd have a better chance of saving 5 people by allowing one to die?
I really hope someone one who's had some real disaster and military training and experience become involved in this case.
Because I think they are really poking a whole in hornets nest here that's gonna result in A LOT of foks - including those who are doing the prosecuting - getting stung. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 926
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 03:11 pm: |
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I predict that this will turn into a trial of the interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath. I wonder when it's set to begin. |
Doberman23
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Doberman23
Post Number: 463
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 03:55 pm: |
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ahhh this reminds me of the good ol' days of dr. j. kervorkian being on the detroit news every other week. |
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