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Doctor Admits Euthanizing Patient During Hurricane Katrina...

"No man shall murder—and it is murder, My children, when he shall give the excuse of saying an individual is no longer living or a part of the world because he has become emaciated, because he lives only with prayers and the help of all scientific means." -  Our Lady of the Roses, June 5, 1976

LifeSiteNews.com reported on August 31, 2009:

A doctor has admitted that he gave orders for a lethal dose of medication to be administered to a patient under his care during the hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005 - a decision that he says he does not regret having made.

Dr. Ewing Cook said that as staff at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans were struggling to evacuate patients from the flooded building, he gave the order to give Jannie Burgess, 79, who was dying of uterine cancer and kidney failure, a dose of morphine that he knew would kill her.

"Do you mind just increasing the morphine and giving her enough until she goes?" Cook said he asked the patient's nurse, and then wrote "Pronounced dead at" on the patient's chart and left it blank to be filled in later.

Cook described the "double effect" of morphine, which is frequently used to control severe pain or discomfort but can also slow breathing and, if suddenly introduced in much higher doses, lead to death.

"If you don't think that by giving a person a lot of morphine you're not prematurely sending them to their grave, then you're a very naïve doctor," Cook said.

"To me, it was a no-brainer, and to this day I don't feel bad about what I did," Cook told ProPublica, an independent nonprofit investigative organization.

"There's no question I hastened her demise," he said. "I gave her medicine so I could get rid of her faster, get the nurses off the floor."

Cook also described another area of the hospital that was crowded with patients on cots and stretchers where he considered euthanizing the ones that had "do not resuscitate (DNR)" on their charts. "We didn't do it because we had too many witnesses," he told ProPublica. "That's the honest-to-God truth."

Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell told AP he would not reopen an investigation launched by his predecessor, Charles Foti, because of the disclosures by Dr. Cook.

In that investigation another doctor and two nurses were arrested on charges of second-degree homicide, but a Grand Jury declined to indict them.

Dr. Anna Pou, a surgeon who specializes in working with cancer patients, and nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo, who had admitted to administering lethal doses of medication to patients during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, were offered immunity from prosecution by Attorney General Foti, before testifying to a Grand Jury that four patients died after being administered what Foti called a "lethal cocktail" of drugs.

Dr. Pou denied the charges, insisting that she did not support euthanasia and claimed to have given only comfort care for the patients.

However, court documents asserted that witnesses had testified that Dr. Pou and the two nurses took syringes full of drugs to a ward for the chronically-ill and injected four patients. Thirty-four patients died in Memorial Medical Center following the Katrina disaster, more than in any comparable-sized hospital in the drowned city.

A coroner's report stated that more than half of the bodies taken from Memorial tested positive for morphine or midazolam, or both. Robert Middleberg, the director of the toxicology laboratory where the autopsy samples were tested, said the high drug concentrations found in many of the patients stuck out "like a sore thumb."

The ProPublica report cites University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan, who, after reviewing the records of the patients who died and the coroner's report, concluded that nine patients were euthanized, and that the way the drugs were given was "not consistent with the ethical standards of palliative care that prevail in the United States." Those standards are clear, Caplan wrote, in that the death of a patient cannot be the goal of a doctor's treatment.

The complete investigative article from ProPublica is available here.

See related LSN coverage:

Doctor and Two Nurses Arrested For Hurricane Katrina "Euthanasia" Nightmare
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jul/06071806.html

Doctor Charged in Katrina Deaths Denies Committing Murder, Euthanasia
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/sep/06092502.html

New Orleans Doctors Kill Patients Rather Than Leave Them to Looters, Then Flee
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/sep/05091205.html

Court Documents: Hospital Gave Lethal Injections to Patients During Hurricane Katrina
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jul/05071204.html
 

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Pope Benedict decries euthanasia as "evil" as Luxembourg parliament advances with assisted suicide legalization...

LifeSiteNews.com reported on December 19, 2008:

Pope Benedict XVI yesterday expressed his "deepest concern" as Luxembourg draws near to adopting assisted suicide into law, which the Pope roundly condemned as contrary to true compassion.

“Political leaders, whose duty is to serve the good of man, as well as doctors and families should remember that 'the deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always evil from the moral point of view and can never be lawful,'" said the Pope, quoting the encyclical Evangelium Vitae.  Benedict issued his remarks as he received the new ambassador to the Holy See from Luxembourg, Paul Duhr.

Luxembourg's parliament on Thursday narrowly voted in favor of the euthanasia law, hours after the Pope voiced his opposition.  The law has not yet been finalized, and will undergo further consideration and possible revision before it could be signed into law next year.  If passed, it would make Luxembourg the third country in Europe to allow euthanasia, after Holland and Belgium.

The current draft of the law also includes improvements for palliative care, which the Pope called a contradictory addition to a law permitting doctors to end the lives of suffering patients rather than care for their needs.  "Love and true compassion embark on another path," he insisted.

"The request that arises from the heart of man in his supreme confrontation with suffering and death, especially when he feels the temptation to let himself be overcome by desperation, and feels lost to the point of wanting to disappear, is above all a petition for someone to accompany him and a call to greater solidarity and support in this test.

"This call can seem demanding, but it is the only one worthy of the human being, and it opens to new and deeper solidarity, which enriches and fortifies family and social bonds."

The Pope encouraged the people of Luxembourg, a predominantly Catholic country, to follow the "path of humanization" in cooperation with the Church.  Hopeful that the people of Luxembourg would be "faithful to Christian and humanistic roots of their nation and the shared interests of promoting the common good," the Pope asked that they still "reaffirm the inviolability and grandeur of human life."

(To see the full text of the Pope's statement to the Luxembourg ambassador, go to: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008...)

At a conference promoted by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry last month, the Pope urged doctors not to give in to the "temptation" of shortening the lives of patients, as euthanasia "appears as one of the more alarming symptoms of the culture of death that is advancing above all in the society of well-being."

Luxembourg's Grand Duke Henri instigated a furor weeks ago when he stated that his conscience would not allow him to sign into force a law permitting euthanasia.  He later agreed to an amendment removing his power as head of state so that his signing would be mere ceremony, a move that the parliament approved.

See related LifeSiteNews.com article:

Grand Duke of Luxembourg Loses Veto Power After Threatening Veto of Euthanasia Law
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/dec/08120401.html

Pope Warns Euthanasia is "Advancing Above All in Prosperous Societies"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/nov/07112109.html

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Will the Catholic Church now issue a form position against vital organ donation?

New England Journal of Medicine: 'Brain death' is not death - organ donors are alive...

"No man shall murder--and it is murder, My children, when he shall give the excuse of saying an individual is no longer living or a part of the world because he has become emaciated, because he lives only with prayers and the help of all scientific means." -  Our Lady of the Roses, June 5, 1976

LifeSiteNews.com reported on August 14, 2008:

In an article that is sure to rock the world of organ donation, the highly respected New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has backed up the objections of various pro-life groups, as well as some scientists and physicians, to certain types of organ donation which involve the removal of vital organs from patients believed to be dead. The problem, say the authors of the NEJM article, is that in many cases these patients may not be dead at all. 

Key experts in the medical field have, since its inception, considered the 1968 invention of 'brain death' and the more recent criteria of 'cardiac death' as unsupportable criteria for true death.  If it is true, however, that brain death and cardiac death are invalid as criteria for true death, it would make morally illicit vital organ donation, since such donation would in some cases result directly in the killing of the donor for the purpose of harvesting his organs. 

The two authors of the article in the NEJM, both proponents of organ donation, argue that "as an ethical requirement for organ donation, the dead donor rule has required unnecessary and unsupportable revisions of the definition of death."

The article was co-authored by Dr. Robert D. Truog, a professor of medical ethics and anesthesia (pediatrics) in the Departments of Anesthesia and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston and Dr. Franklin G. Miller, a faculty member in the Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.

The many cases hitting the media of patients pronounced 'brain dead' and living to tell their stories have already led the public to question the notion of 'brain death'.  A recent case in France where a patient revived on the operating table as surgeons were about to remove his organs, is only the latest in a string of such events.  (see: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08061308.html )

Troug and Miller, after admitting that the scientific literature does not support the criteria for 'brain death' and 'cardiac death' as being real death, suggest instead that ethicists should simply remove the requirement for dead donors.  "The uncomfortable conclusion to be drawn from this literature is that although it may be perfectly ethical to remove vital organs for transplantation from patients who satisfy the diagnostic criteria of brain death, the reason it is ethical cannot be that we are convinced they are really dead," they write.

Similarly they note that with 'cardiac death', "although it may be ethical to remove vital organs from these patients, we believe that the reason it is ethical cannot convincingly be that the donors are dead."  Troug and Miller suggest that, rather than insisting on dead donors, "ethical requirements of organ donation" should be looked at "in terms of valid informed consent under the limited conditions of devastating neurologic injury."

However, the dead donor criteria is precisely the thing that most moral ethicists agree makes it ethical to remove vital organs for transplant. Doing otherwise would constitute actively killing a person via removal of their vital organs. 

In his August 29, 2000 address to the 18th International Congress of the Transplantation Society, Pope John Paul II stressed: "vital organs which occur singly in the body can be removed only after death, that is from the body of someone who is certainly dead."  He added: "This requirement is self-evident, since to act otherwise would mean intentionally to cause the death of the donor in disposing of his organs." (see the full address here: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2000... )

Now that a prominent medical journal has come out and stated that brain death and cardiac death are invalid criteria for true death, some are hoping that the Catholic Church, which has not issued a formal position on vital organ donation, will officially come out in opposition to the practice - a practice which takes place in many Catholic hospitals throughout the world.

"The setting out of these facts should by all rights lead to a cessation of complete removal of any vital organ at Catholic hospitals", said Dr. John Shea, medical consultant to LifeSiteNews.com, who has written extensively on the subject of organ donation.

See the article from the NEJM online here:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/7/674?query=TOC
 

 

"And I repeat again to all clergy in My Son's House: you shall not rationalize sin.  Abortion is murder, and murder condemns you to hell without repentance!  Euthanasia is murder, and murder condemns you to hell without repentance!  The Commandments of your God must be followed, and no changes will be made upon them to suit the basic fallen nature of mankind." - Our Lady of the Roses, November 20, 1979

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There are four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance (extreme punishment):

1) Willful murder.
2) The sin of Sodom.
3) Oppression of the poor.
4) Defrauding the laborer of his wages.

Euthanasia, abortion, physician-assisted suicide, mercy killing, and homosexuality cry out to Heaven for extreme punishment on the United States.

Many people are ignorant of the Church's teaching regarding ordinary nursing care towards extremely ill or terminally ill patients. The Church states that "decisions about these patients should be guided by a presumption in favor of medically-assisted nutrition and hydration” and that for patients, even in an irreversible coma, "all care should be lavished on him, including feeding." 

Pope John Paul II, March 20, 2004:
The Holy Father emphasized that water and food, even when administered artificially, are "a natural means of preserving life, not a medical procedure. Therefore, their use must be considered ordinary and appropriate and as such, morally obligatory."
     The probability that there is little hope for recovery, "when the vegetative state lasts longer than a year, cannot ethically justify abandoning or interrupting basic care, including food and hydration, of a patient." Death by starvation or dehydration carried out "consciously or deliberately is truly euthanasia by omission."
     The Pope recalled the "moral principal according to which even the slightest doubt of being in the presence of a person who is alive requires full respect and prohibits any action that would anticipate his or her death. . The value of the life of a man cannot be subjected to the judgement of quality expressed by other men; it is necessary to promote positive activities to counteract pressure for the suspension of food and hydration, as a means to putting an end to the life of these patients."

Bishop Henry Gracida (interview with Barbara Kralis)
"Some Catholics would argue that they are simply following their conscience and that the Church allows them to do so. They choose to forget that the Church says that one can only safely follow an INFORMED CONSCIENCE, i.e., a conscience that has been formed and illuminated by the teachings of the Church. The Church has given clear and explicit guidelines regarding the removal of a feeding tube through which 'nutrition and hydration' is supplied to a sick person.
     "All persons who wish to remain in communion with the Catholic Church, to receive Holy Communion and the other Sacraments, must assent to the teachings of the Church in matters of faith and morals. [3]
     "If a person supports euthanasia and assisted-suicide through the illicit rejection or removal of a feeding tube, they are not in communion with the Church. They have separated themselves from the Church."

Pontifical Council on Health Affairs, “Cor Unum,” June 27, 1981:
“On the contrary, there remains the strict obligation to continue by all means those measures which are called ‘minimal’, which are intended normally and customarily for the maintenance of life (alimentation, blood transfusions, injections, etc.). To interrupt these minimal measures would be equivalent, in practice, to wishing to put an end to the life of the patient.”

Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 1985:
“If the patient is in a permanent coma, irreversible as far as it can be foreseen, treatment is not required, but all care should be lavished on him, including feeding... If treatment is of no benefit to the patient, it may be interrupted while continuing with the care of the patient.”

U.S. Bishops, Nutrition and Hydration: Moral and Pastoral Reflections:
”Therefore we are gravely concerned about current attitudes and policy trends in our society that would too easily dismiss patients without apparent mental faculties as non-persons or as undeserving of human care and concern. In this climate, even legitimate moral arguments intended to have a careful and limited application can easily be misinterpreted, broadened, and abused by others to erode respect for the lives of some of our society’s most helpless members. In light of these concerns, it is our considered judgment that while legitimate Catholic moral debate continues, decisions about these patients should be guided by a presumption in favor of medically-assisted nutrition and hydration.”

New Jersey Catholic Conference, January 22, 1987:
Another pertinent statement regarding the nutrition/hydration debate was given by the New Jersey Catholic Conference on January 22, 1987 in a friend-of-the-court brief entitled, “Providing Food and Fluids to Severely Brain Damaged Patients.” This document was in reaction to the Nancy Ellen Jobes case pending at the time before the New Jersey Court: 

"The [New Jersey Catholic] Conference maintains that nutrition and hydration, being basic to human life, are aspects of normal care, which are not excessively burdensome, that should always be provided to a patient. Nutrition and hydration are clearly distinguished from medical treatment. Medical treatment is aimed at curing a disease. Nutrition and hydration are directed at sustaining life. Medical treatment is therapeutic; nutrition and hydration are not, because they will not cure any disease. For that fundamental reason we insist that nutrition and hydration must always be maintained....” (Origins, January 22, 1987, p. 583)

"Who will be safe in your land, My children? You will one day grow old. Will you be a burden to your family, to be removed without heart? When you grow sick, you are ill, will you become too much of a burden to your society and they will remove you?" - Our Lady of the Roses, March 25, 1972
 

The awesome Bayside Prophecies...  https://www.tldm.org/Bayside/default.htm  
These prophecies came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995:

EUTHANASIA
“The time will come, My child, when those who are upon the earth will envy those have passed beyond the veil. Insanity, sin. Sin is insanity. The aged will be put to death, the crippled will be put to death, the mentally ill will be eliminated. The value of life will be gone. The value for life will be destroyed. Murderers! Sanctioned among those with the power to destroy the souls!” –  Jesus, March 18, 1974

TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
"No man shall murder--and it is murder, My children, when he shall give the excuse of saying an individual is no longer living or a part of the world because he has become emaciated, because he lives only with prayers and the help of all scientific means. The Eternal Father has placed a soul in that body. That body is the temple of the Holy Spirit! No man can know when that soul must return to the Eternal Father. No man shall hasten its exit from a body by murder! Euthanasia is murder! Shall you become a judge over the living and the dead?" - Our Lady, June 5, 1976

CONDEMNS TO HELL
"And I repeat again to all clergy in My Son's House: you shall not rationalize sin. Abortion is murder, and murder condemns you to hell without repentance! Euthanasia is murder, and murder condemns you to hell without repentance! The Commandments of your God must be followed, and no changes will be made upon them to suit the basic fallen nature of mankind.
     "The road to Heaven, My children, is a narrow one; too few stay upon it. For they are often carried away with the cares of the world, and the pleasures of the materialistic pursuits, and their gathering of money and prestige and power. For what? For the few short years allotted to each human upon earth. I ask you to ask yourself: is it worth it to lose your soul? Many will sell their souls to get to the head." - Our Lady, November 20, 1979

START AND EXPIRATION OF LIFE
"The Eternal Father is much distressed by mankind's actions. They must not try to control the start and expiration of a life. Abortion is murder, My children, for you bring to an untimely end a mission of a soul. The Eternal Father breathes the spirit of life into the body at the moment of conception. No man shall destroy this body until it has completed its mission as directed by the Eternal Father, for any man who destroys the mission and the body is guilty of murder. Euthanasia, untimely death, My children, man has transgressed into a form of evil far worse than in the time of Noe or Sodom. Therefore, how great shall be the punishment to mankind!" - Our Lady, June 12, 1976

GREAT CHASTISEMENT
"My child and My children, the murders of the unborn will bring great chastisement upon the United States, Canada, and the nations of the world, that are now contributing not only to the delinquency of your children and the world's children, but are condoning murder and euthanasia. Euthanasia, My child and My children, is murder!
     "We have been very patient. The Eternal Father has voiced His decision within My hearing, and I tell you, My children, your chastisement is just at hand." - Jesus, July 1, 1985

DOCTORS OF THE EARTH
"I have, O woe to man, this saddest of stories: one of man against man, brother against brother, mother against daughter, father against son, in the battle of the spirits. Now, O poor aged and helpless, poor on earth, you will now be victims of your own. Doctors of the earth, what have you done to yourselves in your practices? You do not seek to preserve life, but to destroy.” – Our Lady, March 18, 1973

Directives from Heaven...  https://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm

D247 - Euthanasia & Murder  PDF   

Articles...

Archbishop Burke warns U.S. legal infanticide, euthanasia are next
https://www.tldm.org/News10/EuthanasiaArchbishopBurke.htm

Euthanasia is murder
https://www.tldm.org/news6/euthanasia1.htm

Catholic hospitals defy John Paul II on feeding tubes
https://www.tldm.org/News6/euthanasia2.htm

Pope John Paul II said euthanasia "seeks to establish who can live and who must die"
https://www.tldm.org/news7/euthanasia3.htm

Cardinal Pell calls for "whole new form" of democracy and asks: "Does democracy need abortion, euthanasia and pornography to be democratic?"
https://www.tldm.org/news7/pell2.htm

Earlier screening for Down's Syndrome may fuel eugenic pogrom against disabled
https://www.tldm.org/news8/euthanasiadown%27ssyndrome.htm

Netherlands set to give go ahead to child euthanasia
https://www.tldm.org/news8/euthanasianetherlands.htm

Catholics in UK carrying ID cards asking not to be starved to death in hospitals
https://www.tldm.org/News10/UKCatholicsCarryingIDcards.htm

 

Place a Crucifix on the outside of your front and back door...  The only real protection against terrorists...
Jesus - "Pray and wear your sacramentals. And, also, My children, I ask you again to place a crucifix upon your door. Both front and back doors must have a crucifix. I say this to you because there will be carnage within your areas, and this will pass you by if you keep your crucifix upon your doors." (6-30-84) (Testimonies of lives and homes saved by the crucifixes.)  https://www.tldm.org/news/crucifix.htm 

Heaven’s Home Protection Packet...
Our Lord stated we must have crucifixes upon the outside of all of our outside doors. In the "Heaven’s Home Protection Packet" there are instructions, four crucifixes, and a tube of special cement for wooden or metal crucifixes. Wooden crucifixes adhere better to the doors when the aluminum strap is removed from the back. Put a light coat of cement on the back of the crucifix and then press it to the outside of the door. If you have any problems, you can call us at 616-698-6448 for assistance. This Heaven’s Home Protection Packet is available for a donation of $5.00 plus $3.00 shipping and handling. Send $8.00 to TLD Ministries, P.O. Box 40, Lowell, MI 49331. Item # P15  (Order Form)

Incredible Bayside Prophecies on the United States and Canada book . . .
We have researched the Bayside Prophecies on the United States and Canada and put these outstanding prophecies in a 360 page pocket size paperback book.   Veronica said it was very good.  It tells what is going to happen here and how to prepare for it.  Every North American must read this book!  Item #B2 Cost $5.00 (Order Form)

Your names have been written in Heaven… "It is not by accident that you are called by My Mother, for your names have been written in Heaven.... But with this great grace you have great responsibility to send this Message from Heaven throughout the world, for if you are able to recover just one more for Heaven, an additional star shall be placed in your crown." - Jesus, August 5, 1975

A great obligation to go forward... "It is not by accident that you are called by My Mother, for it is by merit and the prayers that have risen to Heaven for your salvation.  For those who have received the grace to hear the Message from Heaven, you have a great obligation to go forward and bring this Message to your brothers and sisters.  Do not expect a rest upon your earth, for you will have eternal rest very soon." - Jesus, June 12, 1976

The sin of omission...  "The sin of omission shall condemn many to hell, be they layman or Hierarchy.  I repeat:  not the sin of commission, but the sin of omission will commit many to hell." - Our Lady of the Roses,  October 6, 1980
 

We encourage everyone to print or email copies of this web page to all the Bishops and all the clergy.  Also, email or send this web page to the news media and as many people as possible.

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