2750 Katrina medical tragedy

Be sure to read Michael Hebert's account of the doctor and 2 nurses accused of murder in the Katrina aftermath at Methodist Hospital in New Orleans. Murder at Memorial. He looks at this case from all the angles, the specialty and skill of the doctor, the conditions, the poor prognosis of the patients, and concludes:

"The sad part about this case is that, whether Pou, Budo, and Landry are convicted or not, the unmistakable message is that all three would have been smarter if they had run away. No one is being prosecuted for abandonment. Why didn’t they run? Obviously, because they felt a sense of responsibility to the patients, a sense that no one else seems to have had. Charles Foti wasn’t on a helicopter evacuating patients that week. Neither was Mayor Ray Nagin, or Governor Blanco, or FEMA Director Michael Brown, or Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, or President Bush. It is the great travesty of this situation that the people who are really responsible for the conditions at Methodist are still AWOL, just as they were a year ago."

I disagree with him that GWB should be looked at first, because I don't believe the federal gov't was ever intended to be the first responder, but except for that, he doesn't let politics get in the way--just tells the sad options.