Not a happy post today, sorry.

Three charged with second-degree murder in Katrina hospital deaths

Tuesday, July 18, 2006; Posted: 9:10 a.m. EDT (13:10 GMT)

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- A doctor and two nurses were charged with second-degree murder Tuesday after Louisiana's attorney general launched an extensive investigation to uncover whether hospital staff euthanized some patients after Hurricane Katrina hit, a source close to the case told CNN.

Late Monday, Dr. Anna Pou, Lori L. Budo and Cheri Landry were arrested in connection with the alleged deliberate deaths of some patients at New Orleans Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina hit, a source close to the investigation told CNN.

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This makes my nurse's blood run ice water cold. I've posted on this blog about the trust, the responsibility, the avocation, the commitment that is nursing. As medical professionals, we are entrusted with the knowlege of how to kill in order to know how to save and then TRUSTED to never, never, never misuse that knowlege. This has nothing to do with Right To Life decisions or medical euthanasia. This is MEDICAL MURDER. Can there possibly be a more vile, more anti-social crime? Even a mother murdering her children doesn't affect me as strongly as this. Vile in the extreme, yes, but this is so much more calculating, more cold blooded, less emotional on the part of the murderer.

This is worse than a single doctor or nurse acting on their own vile intentions. If true, this is calculated, planned abuse of the system we all must trust in order to remain healthy.

Every single doctor and nurse at some point must come to terms with whether they are acting on behalf of the will of a higher power or on their own human ego. The healthy minded of us learn in some way or form that we are the instruments of a higher power, not the conductor. G*d - in whatever form one sees it - gives us the ability, the knowlege and the will to heal. As in all things though, he allows us free will to use or abuse what he gives us. Clearly, this is abuse in it's highest and most disgusting form. If these people are guilty of what they are accused, I can think of no more fitting punishment than to send them straight to the G*d whom they betrayed.