Katrina Euthanasia(?) - Questions About Drugs Used
August 7, 2006 by Laura | Trackback URI
The allegation is that Dr. Anna Pou, assisted by two nurses, deliberately killed four Lifecare patients by giving them injections of drugs during Katrina’s aftermath. The Times-Picayune zeroes in on the drugs found in the patients, and based on the drugs used it is far from conclusive that murder was the intent. The women have not been formally charged, although they were arrested. The DA is waiting for a complete coroners report before bringing this to the grand jury.
Two combinations of drugs were used on the patients. Morphine and Ativan, and morphine and Versed. Whether Versed is used together with morphine for palliative care seems to be up for debate. One expert’s opinion -
Rob Middleberg, a Philadelphia toxicology expert authorities hired to study tissue samples from the four bodies, said the presence of Versed is a red flag in post-mortem examinations.
“Whenever you find it out of the blue, we always raise our eyebrows a little bit,” said Middleberg, speaking of general properties of the drug while declining to answer specific questions about the four deaths at Memorial. “Versed is typically used with a surgery, it’s used almost exclusively in relation to general anesthesia, and you don’t find it used very often day to day for therapeutic circumstances,” he said.
And other expert’s opinion:
“Both sets of drugs are commonly used and used about equally in the palliative care of dying patients,” he said.
It’s not clear that the patients were in imminent danger of death either before after Katrina. In any event, if the goal was to euthanize them, according to the article these drug combinations were very poor choices. Were better drug choices available? If there were better drugs readily available, yet not used, that would silence a lot of the debate.
This case, if it ever goes to trial, will be agonizing, not least because of the emotional baggage that Katrina brings to it. I participated in a mock trial last week for a case related to Katrina - completely unrelated to this case - and feelings ran strong. Everyone seemed to view the evidence through the lens of their own “Katrina experience.” Because this involves a loss of life, I can only imagine how difficult it will be for any grand jury to take it on.
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