Three days after Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans, some doctors and nurses at the city's Memorial Medical Center repeatedly discussed euthanizing patients they thought might not survive the ordeal, a CNN investigation has learned. Dr. Bryant King, who was working at Memorial when conditions were at their worst, told CNN, "Most people know something happened that shouldn't have happened."
The Louisiana attorney general's office is investigating allegations that mercy killings occurred and has requested that autopsies be performed on all 45 bodies taken from the hospital after the storm.
Orleans Parish coroner Frank Minyard said investigators have told him they think euthanasia may have been committed.
"They thought someone was going around injecting people with some sort of lethal medication," Minyard said.
Food was running low, sanitation wasn't working, and temperatures inside soared to 110 degrees. Floodwaters had isolated the hospital, where about 312 patients -- many of them critically ill -- were being treated when Katrina hit.
Hospital officials said as many as 11 patients had died before the hurricane, their bodies placed in the morgue. Family members of patients and staff filled the hospital, taxing the dwindling resources.
"It was battle conditions," said Fran Butler, a nurse manager. "It was as bad as being out in the field."
Butler said she did not see anyone perform a mercy killing, and she said because of her personal beliefs, she would never have participated.
She also said hospital staff "put their heart and souls into patients, whether that patient lived or died."
But King said he is convinced the discussion of euthanasia was more than talk. He said another doctor came to him at 9 a.m. Thursday and recounted a conversation with a hospital administrator and a third doctor who suggested patients be put out of their misery.
King said that the second physician -- who opposed mercy killing -- told him that "this other [third] doctor said she'd be willing to do it."
About three hours later, King said, the second-floor triage area where he was working was cleared of everyone except patients, a second hospital administrator and two doctors, including the physician who had first raised the question of mercy killing.
King said the administrator asked those who remained if they wanted to join in prayer -- something he said had not occurred at the hospital since Katrina ripped through the city.
One of the physicians then produced a handful of syringes, King said.
"I don't know what's in the syringes. ... The only thing I heard the physician say was, 'I'm going to give you something to make you feel better,' " King said.
"I don't know what the physician was going to give them, but we hadn't been given medications like that, to make people feel better, or any sort of palliative care," he said. "We hadn't been doing that up to this point."
King said he decided he would have no part of what he believed was about to happen. He grabbed his bag to leave. He said one of the doctors hugged him.
King said he doesn't know what happened next. He boarded a boat and left the hospital.
I'm not really sure how to feel about this.
CNN