New Orleans Hospital Staff Discussed Mercy Killings

From NPR:

There, on the seventh floor of Memorial Medical Center, doctors and nurses were faced with few options. Conditions were deteriorating rapidly, evacuations were sporadic and security was compromised. Staff agonized whether to attempt to transport critically ill patients who might not survive the arduous evacuation. It appears another choice was considered: whether to end the lives of those who could not be moved. In the court documents reviewed by NPR, none of four key witnesses say they knew who made the decision to administer lethal doses of painkillers to the patients. But all four heard discussions that a decision had been made to end patients' lives. According to the documents, attorneys for LifeCare self-reported all of this to the Louisiana attorney general's office on Sept. 14, 2005.

(Via blog.bioethics.net.)

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