New information has surfaced regarding euthanization of elderly patients at a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina.
A doctor has admitted administering a lethal dose of morphine to one patient knowing that it would kill her. "There's no question I hastened her demise," Dr. Ewing Cook told an independent investigation organization. "I gave her medicine so I could get rid of her faster, get the nurses off the [hospital] floor." The patient, Jannie Burgess, 79, was suffering from uterine cancer and kidney failure. "To me, it was a no-brainer -- and to this day I don't feel bad about what I did," Cook added. Rita Marker of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide understands the intense stress doctors and nurses were under during the hurricane, but she believes the attitude expressed by Dr. Cook shows little feeling for life. "He almost seems lethal about it -- [saying] that I did this and it was the right thing to do," she laments. "I could see if someone said 'I was under this immense pressure' and even 'I think [I was] temporarily insane,' [and] that that's what caused them to do this. But to justify it and say it was the right thing [to do] is just macabre." A grand jury took testimony after the hurricane and did not indict three staff members. Marker was asked if the grand jury should revisit the case -- and the answer was a resounding yes. "What they did was to kill patients who were in their care -- and to knowingly and willingly kill those patients," she exclaims. LifeSiteNews.com turns to a ProPublica report that suggests that more than half of the 34 bodies taken from the nursing home tested positive for drugs, and that "high drug concentrations in many of the patients stuck out like a sore thumb."
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