During Katrina, 'Memorial' Doctors Chose Who Lived, Who Died
On how Memorial doctors began hastening their patients' deaths
"At some point on the day that the power failed, a few hours after that, some of the doctors told me that they walked around the hospital, had a look at the situation of the patients and felt that hastening death was the right choice.
"You know, one of them had gone upstairs to the intensive care unit where there was just one patient left. Most of them had been taken out first, but she was very, very sick. She had this do not resuscitate order and had been held back. And he asked the nurse, 'Give her enough morphine till she goes.'
"The other doctor [John Thiele] actually was involved in injecting some of those patients on that Thursday, Sept. 1 of that year. ... And he also told me that the intent was to let these people die. He did describe to me having a moment after he did these acts where he did wonder whether it was the right thing. And he even hesitated just before he started injecting the patients and he asked the woman next to him, a nurse who was on the ethics committee, whether they could really do this.
"Now, one thing he didn't consider was staying there with the patients until they died."
“ There is a tomorrow after a disaster, and it's sometimes hard to remember that in the midst of it.