NEW ORLEANS (BP)–Police in New Orleans have arrested a doctor and two nurses for allegedly murdering patients at the city’s Memorial Medical Center in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last September.
Dr. Anna M. Pou, an ear, nose and throat specialist, and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry were charged with second degree murder. According to arrest warrants, the doctor and her aides intentionally administered lethal doses of morphine and midazolam, or Versed, a central nervous system depressant, to four patients who ranged in age from 61-90.
Bob Stewart, associate professor of philosophy and theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, said the charges, if true, are “symptomatic of a larger trend in our culture, namely that of devaluing human life as such in favor of human comfort.”
“We must remember that not everything that can be done should be done,” said Stewart, who occupies the Greer-Heard Chair of Faith and Culture. “Classically the first thing doctors have been charged with is ‘above all else do no harm.’ Our culture today in many ways has forgotten that. It is not acceptable to do good by doing harm, to cure disease or relieve pain, by destroying human life. This is simply contradictory.”
Steve Lemke, provost at New Orleans Seminary who also serves on the bioethics committee of the Tenet Hospital System in New Orleans, the corporation that owns Memorial Medical Center, commended the medical professionals who stayed in the city to care for the sick as courageous. But Lemke said “euthanasia is not an acceptable alternative to difficult care.”
Conditions at the New Orleans hospital, according to the Times-Picayune, were “hellish beyond expectation” following Katrina. The hospital had no power and, as a result, no air conditioning. Doctors and nurses also were isolated by floodwaters. Patients were “deteriorating,” the newspaper said.
But even though the staff was in a difficult situation, the alleged crimes are inexcusable, said C. Ben Mitchell, associate professor of bioethics and contemporary culture at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill., and a consultant with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
“Doctors must never intentionally take human life. This was not just homicide; it was premeditated. Dr. Pou knew exactly what was going to happen when she administered that particular combination of drugs,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said doctors and nurses are rightly held to high moral standards in the pursuit of healing. And even in extreme circumstances, they should never “use their healing skills for killing.”
“They have a duty to care for patients, even if their own lives hang in the balance. It was their duty to remain with those patients and tend to their needs, not kill them and run,” Mitchell said.
“Human beings are made in God’s image and, as such, life must be respected in whatever form we find it,” Stewart said. “When we choose when and how life will end for others, whom we allow no say in the matter, we have robbed them of what it means to be human.”
One of the patients, identified only as “E.E.” in the arrest warrant, was said to be alert and conscious at the time the lethal dose was injected. A witness reported that the doctor told the patient he was receiving “something to help him with dizziness,” Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. said at a July 18 news conference in Baton Rouge announcing the arrests.
“This is a homicide; it is not euthanasia,” Foti said.
The patients allegedly murdered at the New Orleans hospital were all under the care of Lifecare Hospitals, a long-term care facility that had leased the seventh floor from Memorial Medical Center. According to a statement on the Lifecare Hospitals website, all three of its New Orleans facilities were lost during Katrina, but the acute-care medical group is searching for other sites where it may re-establish services in the community it “so proudly served.”
Further arrests and additional charges could follow in the case, Foti said.
“While I am aware of the horrendous conditions that existed after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and left so many stranded without food, water, electricity and the basic necessities, I believe there is no excuse for intentionally killing another living human being,” the attorney general said. “The fact is, the law was broken and it is my job to seek justice for the victims in the case.”
Stewart said he commended the attorney general for not rushing to judgment in investigating the allegations of murder. He also said that he expected the criminal justice system to resolve the matter under Louisiana law; conviction on the charges carries a mandatory life sentence.
That result may provide some measure of justice if the charges are proven, but the problem ultimately is a spiritual one, Stewart said. “In many ways, our increasingly secular culture has not only disregarded God but also usurped a number of His prerogatives, and thus begun to play God. This is nothing short of self-worship and blasphemy.”
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With reporting by Gary Myers.
