Doctor and Nurses Arrested in Katrina Hospital Deaths

A doctor and two nurses have reportedly been arrested in connection with deaths of patients at a hospital in New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina:

A doctor and two nurses were arrested overnight in connection with the deaths of patients at a New Orleans hospital in the days following Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana attorney general's office 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 three were booked on four counts each after their arrests late Monday but not yet formally charged, officials said. Wartelle declined to elaborate on the allegations.

Foti last fall subpoenaed more than 70 people in an investigation into rumors that medical personnel at Memorial Medical Center had euthanized patients who were in pain as they waited in miserable conditions in the days after the hurricane to be rescued.

The mother of Dr. Anna Pou, who was among the three arrested, said Tuesday she was distressed by the treatment of her daughter.

"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.  . . . .

Angela McManus' 70-year-old mother was among the patients who died at Memorial. She had been recovering from a blood infection, but she seemed fine and was still able to speak when police demanded McManus and other 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."

Let the case unfold as it will, and we'll follow where the evidence leads.

I've previously written that I have some sympathy for the situation faced by both patients and doctors in this hospital after Hurricane Katrina.  Although I'm generally opposed to euthanasia in any form on the theory that where there is life there is hope, the situation in this hospital in the days after Hurricane Katrina sounds a bit like a case of "lifeboat ethics" in which there were no good alternatives and tough moral and practical choices had to be made without the benefit of time and space for quite, objective reflection. 

Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights organization that opposes legalized assisted suicide, euthanasia and other forms of medical killing, has previously suggested that the hospital staff may have wanted to eliminate the patients so they could themselves escape.  In support of that claim, National Public Radio has previously reported that, "According to statements given to an investigator in the attorney general's office, LifeCare's pharmacy director, the director of physical medicine and an assistant administrator say they were told that the 'evacuation plan' for the seventh floor was to not leave any living patients behind, and that 'a lethal dose would be administered', according to their statements in court documents."

Not Dead Yet commented, "In other words, the only way the staff could evacuate was if they could report there were no more living patients to take care of. This was not about compassion or mercy. It was about throwing someone else over the side of the lifeboat in order to save themselves."

Obviously, if patients were killed or their deaths hastened for mere convenience of hospital staff, we may have a case of second degree murder.  But until the evidence unfolds publicly, let's remember that this doctor and these nurses are real people who, up until Hurricane Katrina, presumably served honorably and saved many a life.  Their careers and their futures now hang in the balance.  Rushing to judgment would be particularly inappropriate in such a case.  If the evidence supports their conviction, it will come soon enough.

Meanwhile, it is to be expected that the family members of patients who died in this hospital after Hurricane Katrina would harbor doubts and demand that justice be served.

Whatever the outcome, let's hope our system of justice gets this difficult case right.