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Catholic World News News Feature

New Orleans doctor admits euthanasia after hurricane September 13, 2005

A doctor from hurricane-ravaged New Orleans has admitted to euthanizing patients, rather than leaving them to potential death at the hands of looters.

In an interview with the UK’s The Mail on Sunday, a doctor-- whose name was protected by the media-- claimed that those who were killed were killed out of “compassion.”

“They would have been dead within hours, if not days. We did not put people down. What we did was give comfort to the end," the doctor said.

The doctor admitted to giving lethal injections of morphine. “If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose. It came down to giving people the basic human right to die with dignity.”

The report was corroborated by other witnesses, including local government officials and a hospital orderly. Emergency worker William ‘Forest’ McQueen supported the move by the doctors. “Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die,” he said.

Commenting on the news, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Executive Director Alex Schadenberg said, “Not to mitigate the extreme nature of the circumstances, but the euthanasia cases in New Orleans unveils the very problem with legalizing euthanasia: Who makes the decision?”