Tel-Chai Nation

The disability rights organization Not Dead Yet (via Lost Budgie Blog) reports on the horrifying discovery that the New Orleans Medical Center murdered patients with lethal injections in order to facilitate the hospital staff's evacuation during hurricane Katrina:

"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."

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.

It was bad enough that mayor Ray Nagin skipped town during the hurricane, and the municipality didn't even use the passenger buses that were on hand for evacuating citizens that week. But now, it appears that, in what's surely the most obscene show of contempt for human life in time of emergency, an outfit whose duty is to save lives took them instead, in complete betrayal of their true positions.

Those doctors and nurses who betrayed the patients under their care should be tried and imprisoned for their crimes, and I hope the medics' trial and incarceration will come ASAP.