![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Report: Doctors killed patients in New Orleans
Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals.
Is this a reputable news source? Has anyone read anything about this in U.S./other authoritative coverage?
Because I gotta believe, if this is true, that this is going to be a big deal for the "compassionate conservative" pro-life right wing, the ones who rode into town to make Terri Schiavo's last days such a circus.
This is huge. This has got to shock even Bush supporters. Unless the Bushwackers find some way to pin this on the liberals (perhaps they'll try to spin it that the doctor was one of those cowardly left wing "culture-of-death" types? Or spin it that if the doctor had believed in the right to bear arms like a true red-blooded American should, she would have stayed at the hospital to defend her patients at gunpoint, instead of fleeing to save her own "cowardly" neck?)
Is this a reputable news source? Has anyone read anything about this in U.S./other authoritative coverage?
Because I gotta believe, if this is true, that this is going to be a big deal for the "compassionate conservative" pro-life right wing, the ones who rode into town to make Terri Schiavo's last days such a circus.
This is huge. This has got to shock even Bush supporters. Unless the Bushwackers find some way to pin this on the liberals (perhaps they'll try to spin it that the doctor was one of those cowardly left wing "culture-of-death" types? Or spin it that if the doctor had believed in the right to bear arms like a true red-blooded American should, she would have stayed at the hospital to defend her patients at gunpoint, instead of fleeing to save her own "cowardly" neck?)
no subject
In the Schiavo case, the family believed there was a chance she would recover, and the medics and courts disagreed, all the way to the top. So the entire apparatus of the state was ranged against a chance for life of a person, on their narrative. The case was a precedent for other, similar cases. There were years taken over this decision and it was just about as deliberate as a decision could be in the USA, short of passing a constitutional amendment.
In this case, doctors had to take decisions in very short time with little and diminishing information, and were plainly unsure about the rightness of what they were doing. They had no choice. This case sets no precedent and at the most provides illustrative examples for those who have to provide guidance for medical staff to use in an emergency.
Conservatives may disagree with what the doctors did; they may even try to legislate what doctors should do in emergencies in future. But I think the likelihood is that they will recognise the uniqueness of the situation and let it go. There is nothing to fight over, no routine medical decisions to be influenced here.