BWB: 9 New Orleans Katrina Patients Murdered By Hospital Doc "I Didn't Do It"; Autopsies "Yes, She Did!" - District Attorney Closes Case To Permanently Bury Evidence - What's He Afraid Of? (III) RI10

BWB: 9 New Orleans

Katrina Patients

Murdered By

Hospital Doc

“I Didn’t Do It”;

Autopsies

"Yes, She Did!” - 

District Attorney

Closes Case,

Tries To Permanently

Bury Evidence -

What’s He Afraid Of?

(III) - RI10

Tabacco: Yes, America; Eddie Jordan is Black. The use of Black Judas Goats to achieve the goals of White Bigots, while giving Injustice against Blacks the “Air of Credibility”, is prevalent in the United States of America. Eddie is not the 1st, and he won’t be the last. His Blackness is no guarantee of a “Fair Deal”. Au contraire, it is the Mark of the Devil. “666” should be emblazoned on his forehead.

Christopher Darden, prosecutor in the O. J. Simpson trial

Armstrong Williams, paid by the George W. Bush Regime to mislead Blacks

Don King, public supporter of George W. Bush for president

Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice, appointed by George H. W. Bush, Republican president

Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State in GWB Regime

Colin Powell, Condoleezza’s predecessor

Wilson Goode, Black mayor of Philadelphia, who bombed Black neighborhood in the city

This list is by no means complete; but it includes some of the most blatant Black Judas Goats, who served their White masters and not their Black supporters. Sorry for leaving out the names of other Black Judas Goats, but my time for research is finite. These are the ones that come to mind without hesitation. Let’s refer to them as the “Magnificent 7” – of course, Eddie Jordan belongs on the unabridged list, which includes many, many, many lesser-known Black Judas Goats!


 
   
updated 10:20 a.m. EDT, Mon August 27, 2007

    

Medical experts never testified

in Katrina hospital deaths


* Story Highlights
    * Five experts conclude that as many as nine patients were homicide victims
    * District attorney says it's "inappropriate" to discuss secret grand jury proceedings
    * Doctor tells magazine she gave patients drugs, but not with intent to kill them
    * Son of one patient says he refused settlement offer because he wants the truth


By Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston
CNN

(CNN) -- A New Orleans grand jury that declined to indict a doctor on charges that she murdered patients in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina never heard testimony from five medical experts brought in by the state to analyze the deaths.

All five concluded that as many as nine patients were victims of homicide.

In detailed, written statements, the five specialists -- whose expertise includes forensic medicine, medical ethics and palliative care -- determined that patients at Memorial Medical Center had been deliberately killed with overdoses of drugs after Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005.

The grand jury had been asked to consider second-degree murder charges against a doctor and two nurses in four deaths. But in July, the grand jury decided that no one should be indicted.

A grand jury is charged with determining whether there is sufficient evidence to indict a defendant and pursue a trial. The grand jury's proceedings are held in secret, and grand jurors and officers of the court are typically prohibited from divulging what goes on in grand jury sessions.

In a decision that puzzled the five experts hired by the state, New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan never called them to testify before the grand jury. What remains unclear, because of grand jury secrecy laws, is whether the grand jury even saw the experts' written reports.

Video Watch one expert say he doesn't think the grand jury saw his report »

"They weren't interested in presenting those facts to the grand jury", said Dr. Cyril Wecht, the former coroner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and a past president of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists.

"The hard scientific facts are those from five leading experts, [the patients died] from massive lethal doses of morphine and Versed. As far as I know the toxicological findings were not presented to the grand jury and certainly not with quantitative analysis."

Deplorable conditions at medical center

While the grand jury considered charges in four hospital patients' deaths, the medical experts' reports reveal that investigators believed as many as nine patients were victims of homicide. The documents were released after CNN filed a public records request. Read the documents (pdf)

The probe into the deaths of patients at Memorial Medical Center began after witnesses alleged that seriously ill, mostly elderly patients had been euthanized by medical staff as floodwaters rose around Memorial and conditions inside the building became nearly intolerable.

Those originally arrested in the investigation have denied any wrongdoing, and their lawyers have said they should be applauded for staying with patients as conditions inside the hospital worsened.

One of the physicians absolved in the proceedings, Dr. Anna Pou, described post-Katrina conditions at the hospital as "less than Third World". Hospital staff went into "reverse triage", in which the sickest patients would be treated last, Pou told Newsweek in an article published Saturday.

In the interview, she acknowledges sedating the sickest patients -- not to kill them, she said, but to alleviate their pain until medical personnel could treat them properly.

'I think a lot of people are perplexed'

Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti also questions why Jordan did not call the five experts before the grand jury. Foti's office conducted the investigation before turning over the evidence to Jordan.

"We're perplexed. I think a lot of people are perplexed", Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for Foti, said.

"Those victims' loved ones are asking what happened. They want to know what happened. I think our concern has always been and always will be about them. Nine people died, according to one of the experts, in a three-hour period; one of the experts called that beyond coincidence", she said.

Arthur Caplan, the chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said it's inconceivable that the case is not going to go to trial.

"I was never called to the grand jury", said Caplan. "As far as I know, the grand jury never saw my reports. As far as I know, none of the reports prepared by these experts, who looked at all the cases, who were independent, and came to the conclusion that massive amounts of drugs were used as the cause of death and that they couldn't have been requested [by the patients], they had to be given involuntarily. That's evidence that I think a grand jury would want to be familiar with before it made its decision as to whether or not to proceed with an indictment.”

"Now you can still get into a dispute about the evidence", Caplan added. "You can get into a dispute about the circumstances and all the rest of it, but at face value there is no other conclusion I think that's possible, other than these people -- or someone -- killed them."

District attorney says insufficient evidence

Last year, Foti ordered the arrests of Pou and two nurses, Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, on preliminary charges of second-degree murder in the deaths of four of the patients.

Jordan -- who under Louisiana law was responsible for presenting the case to the grand jury -- gave Budo and Landry immunity, in effect ending the state case against them, in exchange for their testimony.

Jordan has refused repeated requests for an interview to discuss his actions in the case. Last week, he sent an e-mail in response to a question about why he had not called the five experts to testify.

"It is inappropriate to disclose what the grand jury did or did not consider", said the e-mail. "The Orleans Parish grand jury concluded that there was insufficient evidence to indict Dr. Poe (sic) on any violations of criminal law."

But all five forensic specialists believe the medical evidence warranted a trial. All five said that the medical charts, toxicology and autopsy reports they reviewed indicate that deliberate overdoses the pain killer morphine and the sedative Versed led to the deaths of the nine patients.

"The primary and immediate cause of death for each of these patients was acute combined drug toxicity, specifically morphine and Versed", wrote Wecht. "The manner of death would be classified as homicide."

"Large doses of these drugs were present in patients and the administration of the drug was not documented," wrote James Young, the former chief coroner of the province of Ontario, Canada, who, like Wecht, once served as president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

"Accidental overdoses would need to have occurred nine times between 12 noon and 3:30 p.m., all on one floor, to every patient who was left on the floor", Young wrote. " Again, it is noted that morphine was not ordered for seven of the patients and Versed was not ordered for any. Therefore it seems highly unlikely that nine patients died on the same floor on the same afternoon of accidental overdose."

Caplan wrote that there was no evidence any patient asked to be given assistance in dying, and no evidence that any consented to be given an overdose of medication to end their lives.

"In reviewing the facts and opinions, my conclusion is that the deaths of the nine persons at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans are all cases of active euthanasia", Caplan wrote. "Each person died with massive doses of narcotic drugs in their bodies."

Dr. Frank Brescia, a Charleston, South Carolina, doctor specializing in palliative care, wrote that the patients were very ill and the deteriorating conditions in a hospital without air conditioning, electricity and running water contributed to the patients' declining health. Still, he wrote, those conditions did not kill them.

Brescia wrote, "I feel that the manner of death in these individuals, especially in four cases, obligates the legal process to consider them as homicides".

In fact, Brescia wrote in his report that the medical charts showed the patients were "stable, without an immediate or obvious threat of dying".

Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist from New York, also concluded that all nine patients died from drug overdoses.

"It is further my opinion that the circumstances surrounding these simultaneous deaths mandate a homicidal manner of death", Baden wrote.

Wecht was the first expert hired by Foti on the recommendation of New Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard. When Jordan took over the case, he ordered Minyard to hire additional experts. Caplan was asked to review the work of Baden, Brescia, Wecht and Young.

Report: Decision made to administer lethal doses

In its executive summary report included with the forensic experts' findings, the attorney general's office paints a chilling picture of what its investigators say happened four days after the hurricane hit New Orleans.

The summary cites a number of people -- whose names are blacked out in the report -- as having offered statements through their attorneys and having sought immunity from prosecution.

The summary states that Pou told the nurse executive of Lifecare, the acute care facility on the seventh floor of the hospital that housed the nine patients, that "a decision had been made to administer lethal doses of morphine to Lifecare patients".

According to the report, none of the nine was a patient of Pou's and there was no indication she had talked to their doctors before seeing them on the day they died.

The attorney general's report also said that other medical personnel told Pou that one of the patients, Emmett Everett Sr., was conscious and alert. Everett was 61 years old, weighed almost 400 pounds and was confined to a wheelchair.

"Dr. Pou decided (patient name blacked out) could not be evacuated. He could not be taken out by boat because he was not ambulatory and Dr. Pou felt he was too heavy to be evacuated by helicopter", according to the report.
Tabacco: One more reason to lose weight ASAP if you are Black, overweight and live in the Deep-South!

In a written statement, Pou's lawyer denied that the combination of morphine and Versed is a "lethal cocktail". In addition, Rick Simmons said Pou's own expert said it is well-known among scientists that blood levels of morphine are "greatly increased" in patients who have been dead for many days. Read Dr. Pou's response to attorney general (pdf)

Pou does not deny giving the patients drugs. In the days following Hurricane Katrina, floodwaters ran freely through the sweltering, pitch-black hospital, carrying human waste through its corridors, Pou told Newsweek.

Patients were moaning and crying in the halls; some were being fanned with slats of cardboard, others cooled off with dirty water and ice. Treatment was being administered under flashlights, Pou told the magazine.

"What you have to do when resources are limited, you have to save the people you know that you can save. And not everybody is going to survive those kind(s) of conditions. And we knew that", Pou told Newsweek.

The patients on the seventh floor were among the sickest in the hospital, Pou said. Pou administered painkillers and sedatives "to help the patients that were having pain and sedate the patients who were anxious", she acknowledged.

"Basically what we're trying to do is help the patients. (Tabacco: Help them or help yourselves!) Let me tell you --God strike me dead (I WISH!) -- what we were trying to do was help the patients", she told Newsweek. "Any medicines given were for comfort. If in doing so it hastened their deaths, then that's what happened. But this was not, 'I'm going to go to the seventh floor and murder some people.' We're here to help patients."

John DiGiulio, attorney for Landry, one of the nurses originally targeted by the state investigation, said he wasn't privy to the grand jury testimony. "But," he said, "I don't think any information was withheld from the grand jury".

DiGiulio said of his client and the circumstances in the hospital: "[The patients] were either dead or dying in the early days of Katrina. [Landry] was there to assist in giving comfort and care to the dying".

Eddie Castaing, attorney for Budo, the other nurse, said the state's experts' comments don't mean anything.

"The grand jury made its ruling of no true bill so it's not relevant", Castaing said, adding that he has no concerns about these documents.

"We could get 10 experts to say it's not homicide", he said. "It means nothing."

Brescia, one of the five medical experts, said the fate of Everett troubled him the most.

"This one case sort of stands out to you and says to you, 'Gee, I'm not sure what happened'", Brescia said. "And that's what I said, this particular case, if you want to use the word suspicious or unclear or whatever word you want to use, I'm not sure why this patient is dead."

Family conducts its own investigation, says mom was poisoned

Family members of another one of the patients, Elaine Nelson, hired their own forensic expert to explore why the 90-year-old woman died. The report alarmed her son, Craig, a New Orleans lawyer.

"It showed that Mom had received on September 1 eight milligrams of morphine, which was four times the amount that she was prescribed by her doctor, and which was a lethal amount that was certainly enough to kill her", Nelson said.

Nelson said neither he nor his sister Kathy, a registered nurse who was with their mother after Katrina until guards ordered her to leave the hospital, were called before the grand jury. Their forensic expert wasn't called either.

Nelson has filed a lawsuit against the hospital owner and others. He said he refused a settlement offer because he wants the truth to come out, especially now that Jordan has closed the case. Nelson said he is disappointed in the way the grand jury was conducted.

"I think they'd want to hear as much evidence as possible to make a well-informed decision", he said.

But not everyone agrees. In early August, District Court Judge Calvin Johnson delayed a decision on whether to release more records in the case. Lawyers for some medical personnel and former hospital owner Tenet Healthcare Corporation are seeking to seal the records from the public. CNN, along with the New Orleans Times-Picayune, is seeking to get the records.

Johnson indicated he wasn't sure people should know what happened.

"What you presented to the grand jury room stayed in the grand jury room. On one level, I'll suggest no one should know. In a way, I don't want to know", the Times-Picayune quoted Johnson as telling the court.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/26/hospital.grandjury/index.html?eref=rss_topstories#cnnSTCText



   

Doctor, two nurses accused of murder

Memorial staff booked in deaths of four patients
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
By Gwen Filosa, John Pope and Robert Travis Scott, Staff writers

As New Orleans descended into chaos from the floods that came after Hurricane Katrina's pummeling, a doctor and two nurses at Memorial Medical Center deliberately injected four acute-care patients with lethal doses of painkiller without family permission or medical reason, state Attorney General Charles Foti, Jr., said Tuesday.

"This is a homicide; it is not euthanasia", Foti said at a Baton Rouge news conference, where he released a detailed affidavit accusing three of the Uptown hospital's employees of second-degree murder in connection with the deaths of four patients ages 61, 66, 89 and 90. Foti said the deaths were not mercy killings. According to the affidavit, a hospital employee contended that the 61-year-old patient was "aware, conscious and alert".

Dr. Anna Maria Pou, a New Orleans ear, nose and throat specialist, and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, both of Jefferson Parish, were arrested Monday night, booked with four counts of second-degree murder each and released, according to the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff's Office.

"We feel they abused their rights as medical professionals", Foti said. "We're talking about people that were maybe pretending they were God. They made that decision."

The allegations are false, said attorney Rick Simmons, who represents Pou, 50, of New Orleans.

"There is no motivation, and there is no homicide", Simmons said at a news conference at his Metairie office. "It's a year later, and the blame game has shifted to this doctor and two nurses and maybe to others".

Tissues analyzed

Foti said a forensic pathologist analyzed tissue samples and concluded that the four patients died from a lethal cocktail of morphine, a powerful painkiller, and midazolam hydrochloride, a central-nervous-system depressant, which has the brand name Versed. None of the patients was receiving those drugs as part of their care at the hospital, Foti said.

"The crime was that they took morphine and midazolam and injected it into the patients", Foti said.

Simmons suggested other experts could counter the autopsy findings.

"I don't think the autopsies will be that probative, given the condition of the bodies", Simmons said.

Foti did not identify the four patients, citing medical privacy laws. They will be named if formal charges come through Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan's office.

The attorney general's office released the initials and dates of birth of the four dead patients: E.E., born Feb. 20, 1944; H.A., born Feb. 5, 1939; I.W., born Jan. 6, 1916; and R.S., born Dec. 16, 1914. Department of Health and Hospitals records note a Katrina victim named Rose Savoie. Public records show a Rose Savoie, who lived in the New Orleans area was born Dec. 16, 1914.

A relative, who asked not to be identified, confirmed that Rose Savoie died at Memorial and that the family had been contacted by the attorney general's office.

All four patients had been in LifeCare Hospital, on Memorial Medical Center's seventh floor, where gravely ill patients were treated. LifeCare leased space from Memorial to run the acute-care unit.

No charges filed

None of the three women has been charged with any crime; the decision to charge them will be up to Jordan because the deaths occurred in his jurisdiction. Jordan's office said Tuesday it had not received all of the findings from Foti's investigation but that it will begin its review upon receipt.

In Louisiana, anyone convicted of second-degree murder is sentenced to life in prison without parole. An Orleans Parish grand jury is expected to review the case and decide whether enough evidence exists to bring criminal charges.

Foti issued arrest warrants for second-degree murder, but a grand jury could indict on another charge or decide the case isn't worthy of prosecution.

Little was disclosed Tuesday on the state of the patients' health on Sept. 1, the day the lethal doses allegedly were administered.

E.E. weighed 380 pounds and was paralyzed, according to the affidavit filed with the arrest warrant. The 61-year-old patient was conscious and alert, a LifeCare Hospital official told Pou, Foti's investigators said.

"Dr. Pou decided E.E. could not be evacuated", the affidavit said. "Dr. Pou asked if one of (LifeCare's) staff members would sedate him. . . . They briefly discussed the matter with the nurse, but (a LifeCare administrator) decided that she did not want LifeCare staff involved."

The affidavit depicts Pou as taking charge on Sept. 1 and deciding who on the seventh floor would survive evacuation, while LifeCare staff refused to participate in any "lethal doses".

The same LifeCare administrator told investigators that Pou proceeded with the plan to administer the lethal injection to E.E. and said to LifeCare staff: "I want y'all to know I take full responsibility and y'all did a great job taking care of the patients".

45 deaths at Memorial

Memorial reported 45 deaths around the time of Katrina, including 11 before the storm. Of the 34 deaths during or after the storm, 24 were LifeCare patients. However, the charges with which Pou, Budo and Landry are booked concern only the deaths of the four patients identified by their initials.

Foti said some of the Memorial patients had "Do Not Resuscitate" orders in their medical records, indicating a pact between patient and doctor that no heroic measures be made by medical staff to save the patient's life. Such an order is not a defense in this case, Foti said.

According to the affidavit, Pou told a LifeCare executive nurse that "a decision had been made to administer lethal doses" to patients remaining on the seventh floor who, Pou allegedly said, were probably not going to survive, according to the affidavit.

In describing the investigation in February, Foti's office said its inquiry was not focusing on the 44 LifeCare employees who were not doctors.

Lawyer slams Foti

Second-degree murder is defined by Louisiana law as "the killing of a human being when the offender has a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm”.

Simmons, who accused Foti of strong-arming the three women with arrest warrants to ensure a media circus, declined to delve into the patients' histories or the allegations. But he said the four patients did not die by acts of malice.

"They're victims of the storm", Simmons said. "They're not victims of homicide". (Tabacco: Have you ever heard a Bigger Lie? Propaganda? Sophistry?)

Budo, 43, is represented by Edward Castaing Jr. The attorney for Landry, 49, is John DiGiulio. Neither attorney attended Simmons' Tuesday afternoon news conference.

The only piece of the state's case Simmons agreed with was that the four patients were not under Pou's direct care. Instead, the four were patients of LifeCare Hospital as part of its arrangement to run the acute-care unit at Memorial.

"They were not her patients", Simmons said. "These were patients that didn't have doctors."

Simmons questioned Foti's handling of the arrest warrants.

"It's an outrage the way they've done this", said Simmons. "They wanted arrest warrants so they could get mug shots for the media event they had."

Tenet responds

The last staff members left Memorial Medical Center four days after Hurricane Katrina hit. The 80-year-old colossus at 2700 Napoleon Ave., which is owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp., has been closed since.

In a statement responding to the arrests, Tenet called the allegations "very disturbing" and said euthanasia is "repugnant to everything we believe as ethical health-care providers."

Calling mercy killing "never permissible under any circumstances", the statement said euthanasia "violates every precept of ethical behavior and the law".

However, the statement did not pass judgment on the arrested women, saying the judicial process would have to run its course.

The arrests, which came after an investigation that has been under way since October, were announced on the same day Tenet disclosed it is selling Memorial, along with Meadowcrest Hospital and Kenner Regional Medical Center, to Ochsner Health System.

Lindy Boggs Medical Center, another local Tenet hospital, is not included in the sale.

Staff writer Ed Anderson contributed to this story.

. . . . . . .

Gwen Filosa can be reached at gfilosa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3304. John Pope can be reached at jpope@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3317. Robert Travis Scott can be reached at rscott@timespicayune.com or (225) 342-4197.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-6/115329272951040.xml&coll=1&thispage=1



   
Dr. Anna Pou-Kevorkian!
Why are all the victims Black
& the Hospital’s Genocide
Brigade all White? Coincidence?
Yes? Then why don’t Black cops
ever kill innocent Whites? Are White
Cops just cowardly & Blacks heroic?

 

  
From HealthNewsDigest.com

National
Katrina Doc Says She Didn't Murder Patients
By Newsweek - Julie Scelfo
Aug 26, 2007 - 10:04:07 AM

    
Exclusive: Katrina Doc Says She Didn't Murder Patients


(HealthNewsDigest.com) - Sept. 3, 2007 issue - The tragic deaths at New Orleans's Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina were among the most notorious examples of the vast human suffering that resulted from the flooding of the city—and the government's incompetent response to the disaster. At least 34 people died in the hospital awaiting evacuation, and it wasn't long before dark rumors began circulating that some of them were helped along by lethal doses of morphine or other medications. Almost a year after the storm, in July 2006, authorities arrested Dr. Anna Pou, a well-known head-and-neck surgeon. She was eventually accused of murdering nine patients who were in a long-term acute-care unit on the seventh floor run by LifeCare Hospital of New Orleans. (Two nurses were also arrested but their charges were dropped in exchange for grand jury testimony.)

In late July, a Louisiana grand jury refused to indict Pou, and the highly controversial criminal case came to a close. Pou still faces several civil lawsuits brought by relatives of some of those who died while at LifeCare. In her most extensive comments yet on the case, Pou tells NEWSWEEK that she did indeed administer morphine and a sedative to the nine patients and she knew that those medications might hasten their deaths. But, she says, killing them was not her intention. In the desperate calculation Pou and other medical professionals were forced to make, she says, some patients could be saved and others were almost certain to die. "Let me tell you—God strike me dead—what we were trying to do was help", she says. "If in doing so it hastened their deaths, then that's what happened."

In Pou's recollection of the events, she arrived at the hospital the weekend before Katrina hit. By Tuesday, the day after the storm, the hospital interior had been transformed into a fetid catacomb of Third World despair: the power was out, there was no running water, temperatures soared to 110 degrees and the smell was so rancid that it "would burn the back of your throat", she says. "It was hell inside the hospital", says John Marse, a chaplain who spent eight hours fanning patients with a piece of cardboard on Wednesday.

The situation turned even more desperate on Thursday morning, when a hospital administrator announced—wrongly, it turned out—no help would arrive. It was at that point, recounts Pou, that a group of staff convened to determine how best to assist the sickest patients—those who were the least able to be evacuated safely—and they agreed to provide sedation. When asked who specifically appointed her to administer the drugs to the nine patients in the LifeCare unit, Pou says: "It was a group decision. I didn't really volunteer for anything".

As it turned out, rescue helicopters arrived a few hours later, and Pou was among the last to go. Nearly a year later, she had just returned home from a 13-hour day of surgery and was sitting alone eating a lettuce- and-tomato salad, when she heard a knock at the door. It was four law-enforcement agents, who cuffed her and drove her to jail, on four counts of second-degree murder. "The whole way, I was asking God to help my family get through this", says Pou, one of 11 siblings. The response from Pou's supporters, including medical professionals worried about the criminalization of treatment decisions, was swift. The Web site SupportDrPou.com was launched, and in July, hundreds of people showed up at a rally in a New Orleans park. The sensational allegations reinvigorated the debate over whether mercy killings are ever justified.

At the heart of the case, like most things in New Orleans, was a deeply political story. The arrest was ordered by Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti, Jr., a former sheriff who was grandstanding at a press conference about the arrest, claiming Pou "pretended [she] was God". He is now up for re-election. Even after the grand jury declined to indict Pou—a decision supported by the local district attorney—Foti seemed unfazed, publicly discrediting the outcome and criticizing prosecutors for not introducing important witnesses. Arthur Caplan, chair of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania and one of five experts recruited by Foti, agrees the case should have proceeded to trial. "I say that because this isn't an assisted suicide, like Jack Kevorkian", he says. "These people didn't request anything because they weren't in the mental states to do it."

Pou hopes the case will raise awareness of a need to more broadly protect doctors who are willing to offer medical care in disastrous situations. "You have to encourage doctors, not discourage them, to volunteer their services in a crisis", says Rick Simmons, her attorney, who believes a nationwide Good Samaritan law is needed. Pou, who resumed practicing medicine in February, says she is trying to move forward with her life. That won't be easy. "I think everybody who lived through Katrina will carry the memories for the rest of their lives", she says. "How can that ever be over for anybody?"

www.HealthNewsDigest.com
http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/National_30/Katrina_Doc_Says_She_Didn_t_Murder_Patients.shtml

Tabacco: All the voices are raised to protect White Supremacist doctors, who decide when Blacks should die without their permission or acquiescence. Where are the voices raised to protect the Black Victims of these White Supremacists? What would happen, do you suppose, if the doctors were Black and the Victims were White! You’d NEVER HEAR THE END OF IT! And you know that’s true!

Tabacco's response to Dr. Anna Pou is "POOH!"


            
Dr. Anna Pou pauses to compose herself at a July 24 news conference regarding a grand jury's decision not to indict her on murder charges - Bill Haber / AP
Tabacco: Anna, if you’re going to be a really good liar, you will have to learn how to look directly at your audience when you do it.

Dr. Anna Pou was accused of murdering nine patients in a New Orleans hospital wracked by Katrina, but a grand jury declined to indict her. Now she gives her side of the story.



WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Julie Scelfo
Newsweek
Updated: 9:24 a.m. ET Aug 25, 2007

Aug. 25, 2007 - The tragic deaths at New Orleans’s Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina are among the most notorious examples of the vast human suffering that resulted from the destruction of the levees and the flooding of the city—and the government’s incompetent response to the disaster. At least 34 people died in the hospital awaiting evacuation and it wasn’t long before dark rumors began circulating that some of them were helped along by lethal doses of morphine or other medication. Almost a year after the storm, in July 2006, authorities arrested Dr. Anna Pou, a well-known head and neck surgeon. She was eventually accused of murdering nine patients who were in a long-term acute care unit on the seventh floor run by LifeCare Hospital of New Orleans. (Two nurses were also arrested but their charges were later dropped.)

Late last month, a Louisiana grand jury refused to indict Pou and the highly controversial criminal case came to a close. Pou still faces several civil lawsuits brought by relatives of patients who died while at LifeCare. In her most extensive comments yet on the events surrounding those deaths, Pou tells NEWSWEEK’s Julie Scelfo that she did indeed administer morphine and a sedative to the nine patients and she knew that these medication might hasten their deaths. But, she says, killing them was not her intention. In the desperate calculation Pou and other medical professionals were forced to make in the chaos and madness that engulfed the hospital, she says some patients could be saved and others were almost certain to die. It was their suffering Pou says she sought to alleviate.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20437669/site/newsweek/

Tabacco: Ask yourself this question, “When was the last time I heard anybody admit anything the first time he or she was asked the hard question and before all escape routes were closed?”

PS – Since when is “It will create a media circus” a justifiable reason for not attempting to get at the facts?



Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness! When you read Tabacco, if you don’t learn something NEW, I’ve wasted your time.


In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".

 

T.A.B.A.C.C.O.  (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization) – Think Tank For Other 95% Of World

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