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Experts in medicine should shut up
Posted by Raven on July 21st, 2006
When we read articles about the patients who might have been murdered by a doctor and nurses, remember one thing:
These people take an oath to DO NO HARM. Remember, also- it is not in the practice acts of ANY state to do these things.
Experts in medicine and ethics have many questions about the accusations, made on Tuesday by Louisiana’s attorney general, that a doctor and two nurses used lethal injections to kill four critically ill patients in a flooded New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina.
In interviews, several experts said that although they did not know the details of the case, they suspected that it had to be more complicated than the “plain and simple homicide” asserted by the attorney general, Charles C. Foti.
The doctor and nurses may have engaged in mercy killing; if so, given the circumstances, it is not clear that any jury would convict them, a legal expert said. Another possibility, medical experts said, is that the patients were suffering and the only way to keep them comfortable was with high drug doses that may, incidentally, have hastened their deaths. It is not known, though, how much the patients were suffering.
We will be reading a lot from those who were not directly involved in this…who don’t know details. They are talking heads and nothing more. I will refrain from passing judgement on this for now. I hope the accusations are proven to be false though, because if this is true, we have crossed a line that will forever change how medicine is practiced. If this is true patients should never trust their doctors again. I wouldn’t and I work in the field.
July 21st, 2006 at 3:35 pm
Considering the shortage of witnesses, the general chaos… I dont think it will ever be known exactly what happened.