Doctor: I ‘got rid of’ patient after KatrinaNEW ORLEANS - Louisiana’s top prosecutor said Friday he will not reopen a probe into allegations of euthanasia at a hospital crippled by Hurricane Katrina, despite new statements from a doctor that he drugged a terminal patient to “get rid of her faster.”
Dr. Ewing Cook said that as staff at Memorial Medical Center desperately tried to care for and evacuate patients, making spot assessments of which ones might survive, he scribbled “pronounced dead at” on the patient’s chart, intending to fill in time and other details later.
“I gave her medicine so I could get rid of her faster, get the nurses off the floor,” Cook told Pr
oPublica, an independent nonprofit investigative organization, in a report to be published Sunday in The New York Times Magazine.
“There’s no question I hastened her demise,” he said.
Alex Brandon / AP
This July 17, 2006, picture shows an old hurricane evacuation route sign in front of the closed Memorial Medical Center in the uptown area of New Orleans.
Cook, who was a senior physician at the hospital when the storm hit, said state investigators who previously looked into the Memorial deaths never interviewed him.
Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said Friday he would not reopen a probe launched by his predecessor, Charles Foti, in which another doctor and two nurses were arrested on charges of second-degree homicide. A grand jury declined to indict them. Full Story Here
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