A good call

Thank goodness there are still some people around with compassion and good sense. I'm referring, of course, to the new article up on the CNN website entitled "No charges for doctor in Katrina hospital deaths". Here's part of what it says:

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- The doctor at the center of an investigation into four patients' deaths after Hurricane Katrina said everyone must remember the "magnitude of human suffering" after the storm to assure that no health care worker is ever "falsely accused in a rush to judgment."

"Today's events are not a triumph, but a moment of remembrance for those who lost their lives in the storm," she said after a grand jury decided Tuesday not to pursue criminal charges against her.

Pou and two nurses -- Cheri Landry and Lori Budo -- were arrested in July 2006 after a 10-month investigation into the deaths at New Orleans' Memorial Medical Center.

Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti charged the trio with second-degree murder. The charges against Landry and Budo were recently dropped.

Pou, Landry and Budo denied the charges, and their attorneys have said they acted heroically, staying to treat patients rather than evacuate.

The investigation revealed that four patients, ages 63 to 93, were given a "lethal cocktail" of morphine and midazolam hydrochloride, both central nervous system depressants, Foti said.

None of the patients had been prescribed the drugs by their caregivers, and none of the accused treated the four before the injections, Foti said.

I hope that if I'm ever trapped in a disaster and doomed to die horribly that some compassionate health care worker will give me a lethal cocktail. Those women did the right thing and society has no business prosecuting them.