Gridlock on Rye: Louisiana Sends Message: Don't help Us Next Time

There have been many people and groups that helped to make Hurricane Katrina the catastrophe that will haunt our memories for decades. It would seem that some people and groups are still trying to join that band wagon.

The Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, decided to press murder charges for 2nd degree murder against one doctor and 2 nurses. They came to help at Memorial Medical Center the hospital in New Orleans that will linger in our visions of New Orleans at its worst. Staff waited for relief that never came, waited for evacuations that would not come for fear of sniper fire, waited for drinking water, food, and medical supplies to continue to support the hundreds of patients that first the city, the state and then the country abandonded along with the rest of the remaining population of New Orleans.

So now one of the doctors, Dr. Anna M. Pou, and two nurses, Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, are accused of killing four patients. The attorney General can provide no motive for the killings, but claims that tissues from four patients were found to have traces of the drugs, morphine and a sedative called Versed. Both drugs are often prescribed to provide palliative care, or care to keep a patient comfortable. They are recognized as drugs that would not be the most efficient or effective ways of providing a lethal injection as opposed to other drugs readily available in a hospital. However, lethal injection is what the Attorney General has described in his claim.

One of the deceased was 61 years old and weighed 380 pounds. Plus the patient was paralyzed. Another patient aged 89 suffered from dementia and gangrene. A third patient was 90 years old but had been reportedly recovering a day or two before the hurricane, off of support and with good blood work according to her relatives.

The conditions of the hospital are described by all as conditions at the extreme. No fresh water, dwindling food supplies, no electricity, looters in and outside of the hospital, sniper fire directed at the hospital and at rescuers attempting to assist the hospital, patients dying from the 100 degree heat and other squalid conditions, flooding, rats, mold, raw sewage and decay. The staff and volunteers, such as Dr. Pou, who came to assist soley as a result of the hurricane, had to care for hundreds of patients, with little time for rest or sleep and in conditions where their own lives were in serious jeopardy.

Dr. Mark Seigler of the Maclean Bioethics Center at the University of Chicago was quoted by The New York Times on 7/20/06 describing a comparable situation,
"How would I deal with it, if I were stranded on a desert island with 20 people on ventilators, with no electricity, no oxygen, no water and my life in jeopardy as well?”

His analogy is not even as stark as the realities that were faced at Memorial Medical Center.

The State of Louisiana can now add the Attorney General's office to the list of agencies that have or are failing the people of New Orleans. In arresting this doctor and these two nurses, New Orleans is adding insult to injury and sending a message to would be volunteers that if you come to help us, we will not support you, we will not come to your assistance, we will not provide aid or supplies and if you are comfronted with the worst possible situations and find your self in a situation where you feel that lives are in the balance and you must make decisions to help people or comfort people, we may prosecute you afterwards. We will retain our plausible deniability and protect our political positions, while doing nothing of substance, and those of you who perform actions of substance and choose to put yourselves in a position where plausible deniability of situations is not possible, You Will Face Our Consequences.

This is one additional distressful chapter to be added to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. For some people earlier this year, the most fearful thing that we heard were the words of the new FEMA director that declared that FEMA was ready for hurricane season this year. Fearful words coming from an organization led by an administration that suffers from a complete void of credibility. No one believes that FEMA is ready. No one believes that Louisiana is ready and no one believes that New Orleans is safe today.

Now the Louisiana Government has sent us the message that when local, state and federal governments fail to deliver assistance, Volunteers Will Be Prosecuted!

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