Euthanasia: Is it ever permissable? (Your body, your rights?)

Ghostface Kill@ · #1 07-29-2006, 06:45 AM

Quote:

Doctor, 2 nurses held in Katrina deaths

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.

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.

Personally, I believe that in some instances, "mercy killings," are warranted. I am from Michigan originally and I am sure many of you can remember what Dr. Jack "Death" Kevorkian did a few years ago. He assisted a significant number of people with personal suicides. His lawyer, who unsuccessfully ran for governer of Michgan, (luckily) and is also currently facing campaign contribution fraud, argued that the government shouldn't have the right to decide if a person lives or dies, that decision should rest with the individual alone. I tend to agree that the government should not have control over your body if you are capable to make the decision on your own. -- Such is the case with abortion as well. -- I do not understand how in a hospital a terminally ill patient can have a "do-not-resessitate order," but it is illegal to perform an assisted suicide.

-Ghost

ps. These doctors are heroes, not criminals.

Turk · #2 07-29-2006, 07:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghostface Kill@

-- I do not understand how in a hospital a terminally ill patient can have a "do-not-resessitate order," but it is illegal to perform an assisted suicide.
-Ghost
ps. These doctors are heroes, not criminals.

Are you specifically referring to the New Orleans doctors in the article you posted?

joeninpo · #3 07-29-2006, 07:41 AM

Man...what a tough subject...it will be interesting to see the debates on this one. All I know is that unless you've been in a situation where a normal human has to make life and death situations, then you really don't understand what they went through.

Ghostface Kill@ · #4 07-29-2006, 07:45 AM

Yes, in my reference to being heroes I meant the doctor/nurses in New Orleans. As for the terminally-ill patient comment, that was generally speaking, not specifically Katrina related.

-Ghost

Turk · #5 07-29-2006, 08:39 AM

The article you posted in all likely hood does not give the entire story however, based on what it does say, I don't see how you can come close to equating what those doctors did with a doctor who assists with the requested suicide of a terminally ill patient. If anything, the doctors in the article fell totally apart during a crisis when their patients needed them to make sane decisions the most. Let me put it in an analogy for you. Suppose you had a battlefield medic with several severly wounded soldiers. They had no way to medivac out to a secure hospital and they were in the midst of fending off an attack. Would it be morally just for the medic to kill the wounded soldiers so that the rest of the unit may more easily retreat and regroup?

Parisok · #6 07-29-2006, 08:56 AM

So what is the difference between assisted suicide and I do not want resuscitation? They are both patient directed/requested and both result in death.

Ghostface Kill@ · #7 07-29-2006, 09:20 AM

What I was really going for here is that these individuals are being victimized.
Everyone is quick to blame someone else for what happened in the aftermath of Katrina. Also, why do you think I was trying to compare these doctors to a doctor who performs assisted-suicides? I was clearly stating the legalities surrounding the differences (or lack thereof) between the two. And, since you wanted to go there.. In any mass casualty incident the proper course of action is to perform triage on those who you can actually save. Honestly, there is no comparison as the two are completely different situations.

Turk · #8 07-29-2006, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parisok

So what is the difference between assisted suicide and I do not want resuscitation? They are both patient directed/requested and both result in death.

Just because the end is the same doesn't mean there are not differences between the two. They have definite differences. A person who is terminally ill and is fully conscious may make a fully cognizant decision to commit suicide because they no longer want to consciously live in a state that they consider has a lesser quality of life. They would rather die on their own terms and in an environment they choose, i.e. surrounded by certain people, alone, in a park, by a river etc,... Many people make a declaration that their wish is to not be resuscitated from a certain state of physical deterioration should they succumb to it. In case their condition deteriorates or in the case of the otherwise healthy, in case of an accident, should they end up on a respirator, feeding tube, in a coma or otherwise vegitative state, they do not want efforts made above and beyond their normal bodily ability to keep them alive. This is a legal tool used by many people who are just fine and dandy today but they do not see the point in putting their family and theirselves through the stress of being artificially kept alive.

Turk · #9 07-29-2006, 09:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghostface Kill@

Personally, I believe that in some instances, "mercy killings," are warranted. I am from Michigan originally and I am sure many of you can remember what Dr. Jack "Death" Kevorkian did a few years ago. He assisted a significant number of people with personal suicides. His lawyer, who unsuccessfully ran for governer of Michgan, (luckily) and is also currently facing campaign contribution fraud, argued that the government shouldn't have the right to decide if a person lives or dies, that decision should rest with the individual alone. I tend to agree that the government should not have control over your body if you are capable to make the decision on your own. -- Such is the case with abortion as well. -- I do not understand how in a hospital a terminally ill patient can have a "do-not-resessitate order," but it is illegal to perform an assisted suicide.

-Ghost

You are the one who alluded to assisted suicide in your posting, one could only think you are trying to tie it all together in your apparent argument to say that the New orleans doctors are heros for selectively snuffing out patients whom they thought could not survive being moved.

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