“Experts” in ethics had a discussion about the rights and wrongs of “mercy” killings. In light of recent relevations down in Louisiana, where officials are investigating dozens of questionable deaths, the topic will become less taboo in America.

(CNN) — When and how to end one’s life is one of the most emotionally charged and divisive issues of our times.

One need look no further than the legal drama surrounding the end to Terri Schiavo’s life in Florida last year, or the arguments over Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law now being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But those cases, medical ethicists say, can’t compare to the situation confronting health care professionals in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina as the water rose and the electricity went out, and no one came to help for days.

Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti told a legislative committee earlier this month that his office was investigating dozens of deaths to determine whether hospitals or nursing homes abandoned or euthanized patients, or whether mistakes were made in their evacuation.

The issue of ending someone’s life is complex, experts in medical ethics say. Withdrawing treatment from terminal patients who request it differs greatly from physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.

In a major disaster, life and death decisions must be made in desperate conditions.

Even though I do not agree with Oregon’s DWD law, I have read it and there are safeguards written into it. Those laws are a lot better than the Dutch laws, for sure. Under circumstances such as natural disasters, medical people have no right to make such decisions. If it is proven that doctors and nurses went beyond that gray shady area, they should be offered no immunity and no mercy.

“In the aftermath of Katrina, they were doing triage-type medicine,” said Stuart Finder, senior medical ethicist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

“It happens in war,” he said. “If one soldier is injured worse than the others, and it takes more effort to save that one than the six who have lesser injuries, we save the six. That’s well established.”

Finder placed himself in the shoes of the Louisiana doctors.

“Imagine if you’re in a situation when somebody has a ventilator and the electricity goes out, and then the generator goes out,” he said.

In the battlefields, during war, it is medics who perform the life saving efforts as well as triage. One cannot compare the two very different situations. Here, we had well educated doctors and nurses who are trained to perform triage and are trained to react to it and deal with it. Yes, some patients will require immediate live saving interventions and others will not. That doesn’t mean the less effected are ignored (or in this case, put to death.)
And if a patient is on a vent with no power, you manually ventilate them. It’s as simple as that.

I have been in situations where we had to do this; it was exhausting and I shed many tears. I can see this situation as being desparate if there were MANY on vents and little staff around to help. There would not be enough people to do this for hours, perhaps days at a time. In these cases, you’re not “euthanizing” patients; you would access all of them and see who might be able to get by with a trach. You would check VS and monitor the patients and see who is stable, who is unstable and who is critical. The critical get the help first while you try to maintain the status of the others. What you don’t do is give up. You don’t stand around and do nothing. And you don’t discuss who should die vs. who should live.

You have someone who is going to slowly suffocate, a person who is going to die,” he said. “If you’re in that situation, you ask, ‘How do I relieve the suffering of this person who is dying?’ ”

He said it would be reasonable to administer morphine to ease the pain of dying. For a frail, terminal patient even a little bit of morphine can be enough to bring death.

NO. You provide as much care as possible without all the toys and machines of modern medicine. The people here are banking on average Americans being numb when it comes to medical care and treatments. You don’t always need machines to keep people alive. When worse comes to worse, you allow nature to take over. That happens when all else has failed. The fight for saving the life really doesn’t stop until those last moments.

Any medical professional who deliberately hastened the deaths of patients in post-Katrina Louisiana crossed the line, said Aine Donovan of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

“No one in their right mind would do that to elderly people in a crisis situation,” said Donovan, executive director of Dartmouth’s Ethics Institute. “There is no moral way anyone could excuse just bumping them off.”

Donovan said Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law, known as the Death with Dignity Act, has strict standards. It must be at the request of a rational patient with less than six months to live. Three doctors must sign off on the terminal prognosis.

“Never, not under any circumstances, under any condition ever” should the decision be made during a crisis, she said. “You can’t make rational choices in a crisis mode.”

I could not have said it better myself. They crossed the line and no one should accept any excuses. Once we start allowing excuses, this scenerio will present itself over and over again. Every stressful situation will be deemed one of those times….America cannot go down this road.