We had to kill our patients | the Daily Mail

We had to kill our patients the Daily Mail

We had to kill our patients
by C AROLINE GRAHAM and JO KNOWSLEY, Mail on Sunday 09:01am 11th September 2005

Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.
In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she 'prayed for God to have mercy on her soul' after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.

New Orleans: Doctors forced to 'play God'

Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials. One emergency official, William 'Forest' McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."
Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana, and The Mail on Sunday is protecting the identities of the medical staff concerned to prevent them being made scapegoats for the events of last week.
Their families believe their confessions are an indictment of the appalling failure of American authorities to help those in desperate need after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, claiming thousands of lives and making 500,000 homeless.
'These people were going to die anyway'
The doctor said: "I didn't know if I was doing the right thing. But I did not have time. I had to make snap decisions, under the most appalling circumstances, and I did what I thought was right.
"I injected morphine into those patients who were dying and in agony. If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose. And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul."
The doctor, who finally fled her hospital late last week in fear of being murdered by the armed looters, said: "This was not murder, this was compassion. They would have been dead within hours, if not days. We did not put people down. What we did was give comfort to the end.
"I had cancer patients who were in agony. In some cases the drugs may have speeded up the death process.
"We divided patients into three categories: those who were traumatised but medically fit enough to survive, those who needed urgent care, and the dying.
"People would find it impossible to understand the situation. I had to make life-or-death decisions in a split second.
"It came down to giving people the basic human right to die with dignity.
"There were patients with Do Not Resuscitate signs. Under normal circumstances, some could have lasted several days. But when the power went out, we had nothing.
"Some of the very sick became distressed. We tried to make them as comfortable as possible.
"The pharmacy was under lockdown because gangs of armed looters were roaming around looking for their fix. You have to understand these people were going to die anyway."
Mr McQueen, a utility manager for the town of Abita Springs, half an hour north of New Orleans, told relatives that patients had been 'put down', saying: "They injected them, but nurses stayed with them until they died."
Mr McQueen has been working closely with emergency teams and added: "They had to make unbearable decisions."

Add your comment View all Reader comments (120)
120 people have commented on this story so far. Tell us what you think below!

Here's a sample of the latest comments published. You can click view all to read all comments that readers have sent in.

What a truly awful situation for anyone to be in. They did what they had to do under those circumstances and it is not for any of us to judge. If we believe in a merciful God, we know they will be judged with mercy. Contrast their actions with the couple who left the residents of the Nursing Home they owned to die when they fled to safety having refused evacuation.- Valerie, Amman, Jordan
I hope the people died with dignity like they should with the circumstances that I can only imagine. My heart goes out to the people down there along with all the health care workers willing to be in the middle of it all. God Bless them all.- Jackie, WV,USA
I am completely appalled that these Doctors chose to take the life of a human being. Being murdered is never and will never be considered a dignified way to die. They have several drugs they could have used to make these people sleep while they died that way they would have been oblivious to the pain of dying. They have drugs that intentionally put people in a coma. What about the drugs they use to make people sleep before an operation and they would have died peacefully in their sleep. I completely understand their intention but the means in which they accomplished it was morally wrong. No one wants to see someone suffer but suffering is a fact of life because if it wasn't a fact of life no one would suffer. But we can accomplish easing that suffering without killing someone out right. I will pray for those doctors but the fact still remains that they have blood on their hands and something needs to be done to make sure nothing like this will ever happen again.- Jackie York, Houston, Texas, United States of America