Euthanasia, Cajun-Style
This is from Sunday's New York Times Magazine:
The floodwaters from Katrina had knocked out the power. Doctors and nurses were overstretched and overtired, patients were dying and the evacuation of many of the sickest seemed impossible. Injecting drugs was one answer that some member of the medical staff decided on. Were they trying to comfort those patients – or hasten their deaths?
Sounds like euthanasia to me.
I agree.
Some of the deaths were undoubtedly cases of euthanasia under dire circumstances. Many of these patients would likely have died under the horrendous conditions had they been evacuated. But nobody is willing to have an honest discussion about how there may exist some extreme circumstances where euthanasia could be acceptable — even if those extreme circumstances are a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophic Hurricane.
Devonl it’s hard to have a rational discussion when everyone is in denial.
Those unfortunate souls, who found themselves deathly ill in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck, were apparently not the only patients to have their death purposely hastened by medical science. In 1936, the physician for King George V of England, also hastened the king’s death so it could be announced in the morning papers — which has much more dignified than the evening papers.
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/11/28/world/1936-secret-is-out-doctor-sped-george-v-s-death.html