Natural disaster, unnatural deaths: the killings on the life care floors at Tenet's Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina.

This article examines the meaning of the killing of four patients with disabilities on the Life Care ward of Tenet's Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans in anticipation of hurricane Katrina. None were terminally ill. None were in pain. None knew their lives were about to end. None were evacuated. The victims had one thing in common: they all had chosen to be designated as Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) patients. All were killed with overdoses of medications that had not been prescribed for them. Dr. Daniel Nuss of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine and Dr. Floyd Burras, President of the Louisiana Medical Society defend the doctor's actions as involuntary euthanasia or mercy killing. Was this euthanasia, or homicide? At Memorial, the term DNR took on a new meaning--Do Not Rescue. In this new Memorial model, patient autonomy to control and choose one's medical treatment, yields to the physician's unilateral power to arbitrarily decide who lives and who dies. The author concludes that doctors and hospitals must observe the rule of law, even in times of natural disaster.