Natural disaster, unnatural deaths: the killings on the life care floors at Tenet's Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina.
Issues in Law & Medicine › Vol. 23 Nbr. 1, June 2007
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Natural disaster, unnatural deaths: the killings on the life care floors at Tenet's Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina.
ABSTRACT: This article examines the meaning of the killing of four patients with disabilities on the Life Care ward of Tenet's Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans in anticipation of hurricane Katrina. None were terminally ill. None were in pain. None knew their lives were about to end. None were evacuated. The victims had one thing in common: they all had chosen to be designated as Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) patients.
All were killed with overdoses of medications that had not been prescribed for them. Dr. Daniel Nuss of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine and Dr. Floyd Burras, President of the Louisiana Medical Society defend the doctor's actions as involuntary euthanasia or mercy killing. Was this euthanasia, or homicide? At Memorial, the term DNR took on a new meaning--Do Not Rescue. In this new Memorial model, patient autonomy to control and choose one's medical treatment, yields to the physician's unilateral power to arbitrarily decide who lives and who dies. The author concludes that doctors and hospitals must observe the rule of law, even in times of natural disaster. ********** On July 18, 2006, Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti announced the arrests of three white females, Dr. Anna Pou and Nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, who are accused of murdering four black patients on the Life Care ward on the seventh floor of Tenet's Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans (herein called "Memorial"), by injecting them with lethal doses of morphine and midazolam (the generic form of Versed). (1) The victims were Emmett Everett Sr. (age 61); Hoffis Alford (age 66); Ireatha Watson (age 89); and Rose Savoie (age 91). (2) All of these victims were expected to live, as none were in danger of imminent death from natural causes. (3) Rose was ill from bronchitis, but otherwise in good health. (4) Her daughter, Jennie Crabtree said, "She didn't act like a 90 year-old; she was all there. She knew where she was. She knew who she was." (5) Emmett "could have lived for years. All he wanted was to live to be with his grandkids." (6) Ireatha was ill from gangrene in both legs and dementia, but she was in stable condition when last visited by her daughter, two days before Katrina hit. (7) She was sch...See the full content of this document
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