Murder in the Mississippi Mud? Ghosts of Katrina shake up the Big Queasy A month or so ago, I reported to my readership the incredible litany of abuses that have been perpetrated with millions of dollars -- your tax money, might I remind you -- that was earmarked for relief for Katrina victims. To refresh you, some of that money was used for things like vacations, extended stays in four-star hotels, season tickets to the NFL, prostitutes, and even a sex change… But rampant misappropriation and misuse of monies allocated to heal and restore the Big Easy's disaster victims isn't the only malfeasance that ensued in the wake of the Storm of the Century. How about another "M" word: Murder. According to breaking news from the Associated Press and other sources, a trio of New Orleanians -- a doctor and two nurses -- have been arrested by the NOPD on behalf of the Louisiana Attorney General's Office on four counts each of murder in the second degree. Details are scarce at this early stage in the investigation, but the allegations are that these three employees of the Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans drugged or killed by other means as many as 34 patients at the facility in the days immediately following the storm. Reports indicate that the hospital was isolated by flooding following the August 29, 2005 disaster, with no power and hundred-degree heat inside as patients waited four days for rescue and relief to arrive… Over that period, 34 of these patients died. At first, the Orleans Parish coroner chalked up the deaths as "Katrina-related." But after testing samples from the dozens of corpses and comparing them to bodies from other Big Easy hospitals, either the coroner or someone else in authority smelled a rat. Now, over 70 people have been subpoenaed in an investigation into the likelihood that medical staff (the three arrested so far, and perhaps others) at Memorial killed these poor folks, most likely with drugs like morphine. According to the AP piece, at least one of the patients was recovering well from the blood infection that had hospitalized her at Memorial -- even so far as speaking to visiting relatives immediately before the pre-Katrina order to evacuate was given. Later that day, she was dead. Even if it's revealed in the course of this investigation that these deaths were indeed "assisted" by medical staff in the name of mercy, this is still a rather disconcerting development. After all, hospitals are places that SHOULD be equipped to deal with all kinds of crises -- including natural disasters and power outages… And that includes being staffed with professionals who won't come unglued and start murdering their charges at the first sign of trouble. Doesn't it? I sure hope so. I'd hate to think that we're facing such a shortage of qualified medical personnel that we're staffing our hospitals with people unequipped to handle stressful situations without turning into homicidal maniacs. That would be like battlefield medics turning dead soldiers' guns on their living platoon-mates at the first sight of an enemy tank! I'd also hate to believe that modern medical schools are teaching doctors and nurses to start euthanizing patients with high doses of drugs every time a fuse gets blown… One never knows, though: Modern med school graduates no longer even have to swear allegiance to the Hippocratic Oath. Besides, tens of thousands of us are inadvertently murdered every year by medical errors involving prescription drugs our doctors give us when there isn't any kind of looming crisis at all. Come to think of it, maybe those 34 dead over four days at NOLA's Memorial Hospital weren't murdered, just the victims of improper administration of drugs. What do you think? More as this story develops… Advising, not euthanizing, William Campbell Douglass II, MD | 
