Good Gawd....Dr. on Aaron Brown

[Jacobin]

Went to New Orleans airport and was turned away to help because he wasn't FEMA Certified?A?A?


He said there were 80 people in an 'expectancy room'...which was a morgue with 20 people ALIVE who fema was letting DIE, and all they needed was water because they were dehydrating.

He talked to a fema approved nurse who was misdiagnosing a diabetic, he had the insulin to save this person, he was hauled away and when he went back to see this woman she was dead.

An expectancy room........a morgue filled with 20 or more LIVE people they allowed to die while they ran off doctors, in the dark, alone, surrounded by corpses.

I am beyond amazed

[in_cog_ni_to]

1. Crimes against humanity. They will pay.

Some day, those people will pay for what they have done. :grr:

The morgue story makes my blood BOIL! A doctor on the Oprah show said the same thing. The people are still alive when they're taken there and just left to die...in the dark, all alone and no family or loved ones with them. :cry: It's SICK!

[spanone]

4. That just reeks of compasionate conservatism.

[Bozita]

8. compassionate + conservatism = New Orleans

[Arkansas Granny]

41. These are two words that I am eliminating from my vocabulary,

along with "resolve", because of the unpleasant reminder of the person from whose lips I have heard them countless times over the last few years. Every time I hear the words, I see that smirk. UGH!!

[alittlelark]

2. I pray I am never in an 'expectancy room'

I would prefer to be shoved out in front of a bus - quick, easy, painless.

[On Par]

3. Stunning, just stunning. It was like a Nazi war camp

[teach1st]

5. I hope all those people who howled about Terri Schiavo...

...are on top of this.

I know they won't be. Bill Frist, MD, where are you?

[Jacobin]

10. I don't understand how these people can live with themselves

[susanna]

19. They can't live with themselves...

...and therefore, by definition, they can't live with others.

They are fighting an internal war of self-hatred, black/white, right/wrong...in a world of gray. Those of us who understand the gray will never understand them. That's the way it is. :-(

[KittyWampus]

48. Quibble, My World Is Full Spectrum, Not Gray. These Reptiles Are

indeed Black/White though.

[SammyWinstonJack]

38. Are they people? I don't think so. nt

[Nothing Without Hope]

26. He had that relentlessly rebroadcast little photo-op with the poor people

in New Orleans, then he rushed back to Washington to work on tax cuts for the wealthy - the estate tax.

Obviously, like Bush, he's one of the ones who "feels their pain" as long as the TV cameras are running.

[SeattleGirl]

6. I saw that too.

Aaron wants to have the doctor back to talk more about what happened there. One of the worst things (though not as bad as the "expectancy" rooms) was that when the doctor finally did get his FEMA paperwork, he said it took two seconds to complete. Why in the hell wasn't anybody from FEMA taking care of this the second the med folks boots hit the tarmack? This has got to be the gawd-awful-est thing I have ever seen in my life -- and I mean the entire mess!

[Maccagirl]

7. Danny Glover said it best at a benefit

"When the hurricaine struck, it did not turn the region into a Third World country-it revealed one."

Does anything else need to be said?

[tnlefty]

9. Bill Frist is Still a Punk!!! If he was truly a doctor, as in wanting to

help people instead of just making a ton of money, WHY THE HELL wasn't he there sooner than he was? Huh? Huh? I find it rather odd that the first photos that I saw of FrankenFrist were made at the same time that a true and decent Tennessean, Al Gore, was there to evacuate people and to get them help.

Frist is a punk and a huge blemish on the state of TN.

[Bozita]

14. the looting of NOLA and the looting of Medicare by the Frist family...

... business


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4819871

[tnlefty]

17. Thanks for the DOJ link. I'd read previously that Bush** started

the process to make this go away. Bastards!

[Bozita]

21. Those are settlement numbers -- Actual thievery was much greater

When Senator Frist speaks about health issues, he doesn't speak for me.

[Missy Vixen]

11. I'm not sure we'll ever see the end

of the horrifying stories from the Gulf Coast. This has to be most people's worst nightmare: >An expectancy room........a morgue filled with 20 or more LIVE people they allowed to die while they ran off doctors, in the dark, alone, surrounded by corpses.<

We are the richest, most defense-oriented, medically advanced nation on earth, but FEMA and the Bush administration couldn't spare anyone to bring water to the dying? How about holding their hand for that last few moments so they didn't feel quite so alone?

:cry:

Julie

[mandyky]

12. but but but they're praying over bodies found

oh the hypocrisy after Terry Shiavo!

[hedda_foil]

13. I think we need to face the horrible reality

What this disaster has revealed (not just created but revealed) is beyond dystopian, beyond social darwinism, beyond everything but the blackest science fiction ... bleaker by far than Philip K. Dick's darkest imaginings. We truly are far, far beyond thunderdome. And we've gone from the brighest summer day of Dorothy's Kansas to this dank and doomed moonscape of evil in just 5 years.

[expatriate]

20. This is far too simplistic.

Do you think everything was bright and sunny five years back - for poor people regarding health care? Or housing? Or education? Come on! I have gotten weary of the endless nostalgia on DU for "the golden Clinton years". Do you honestly think all Americans were happily dancing in the sunshine up until the day George W. Bush took office, horrific as his administration has been?

Lots of the cuts to social services and social programs were made during Clinton's administration. The money saved through his cutbacks of welfare programs helped create the surplus he produced. It was during this time that the lifetime caps were placed on aid to families with dependent children, with the provision that no family could receive welfare for more than 24 months at a time, with a limit of 60 months total welfare benefits for a lifetime. I can remember the grandmothers, in their seventies, who were caring for the dependent children left behind by their dead sons or daughters, who were suddenly told that their benefits would be reduced and that in 24 months, would be cut off entirely, and that they, far beyond retirement age, would have to get jobs to support those children.

This resulted in a swelling of the foster care rolls the likes of which has never been seen before. And once a child ends up on foster care - well, I hope you don't think that the foster care system consists of Mr. and Mrs. Kindly Normal, who do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Many people who become foster parents do it with nothing more than money on their minds, and take in as many children as the system will allow. Group foster homes, where kids get shunted when they reach the difficult teens, are pretty grim in most cases. There are some devoted and decent foster parents out there, yes, but they are in the minority. Any social worker dealing with foster care will tell you this is the case. And yes, during those welfare cutbacks, people who had been able to support their children, particularly custodial grandparents or other elderly relatives, had no choice but to give up the children they were raising, because they simply could not support them. That was one of the many wonders created by the reorganization of welfare programs - to say nothing of the millions of working poor that the same reorganization created.

Ronald Reagan, before Clinton, gutted educational aid. At one time, a poor person could break the cycle of poverty by qualifying for enough grant money, particularly if he was no longer claimed as a tax deduction by his parents, to attend a public university. Then came Reagan - and that was the end of that. People could no longer begin to afford college if they weren't living above a certain income. It became harder and harder to break the cycle of poverty.

Minimum wage in America has always lagged behind minimum wage in other countries. In Australia, at present, the minimum wage is $434 and change a week. In America, if you work 40 hours per week at that princely sum of $5.35 an hour? $214 a week. And of course, if you have a minimum wage job, you probably won't be scheduled for a full time week, because your employer won't want to have to pay for benefits like a couple of sick days a year, or a week's vacation.

America has never given poor people a fair shake, at any time in its history, just as minorities have never really been given a fair shake. Thanks to misbegotten policies of the last few administrations, including during those golden Clinton years, things are worse than ever, and people are falling under the poverty line at an unprecedented rate.

It isn't anything that's just happened in the last five years, though it has certainly gotten much worse. Being poor in America hasn't ever been a cakewalk, and there have always been plenty of factors working toward keeping a poor person poor.

[jbnow]

34. I wonder if some of the requirements

were determined by the state.

I was working in human services when Clinton's work requirements started. Not with that agency or program, but another program in my agency helped people on ADC find work. Those not ready could get training, schooling or other support. And those not able to realistically raise kids and do work or training, for instance due to disability, after assessment were released from that obligation. No elderly people were required to work at all.

I consulted with that program at times and the part that really bothered me was they were required to start when the baby was 3 months old. I thought it should be at least 2 years old. Daycare and medical assistance went on for quite some time.

Overall it didn't seem like a bad deal...it was only 20 hours per week of work/training and I really saw some people blossom. It can be scary to go out into the world when you never have before.
But at that time employment was booming, jobs were easy to find, advancement came quickly as people learned their jobs and jobs had benefits.

Soon after Bush came he raised it to 40 hours per week and there was high unemployment and fewer benefits. Ongoing medicaid and daycare ended sooner. I wasn't at that job anymore but I really worried. 40 hours means many more when you include transportation and kids need more time then that. I worried about them going between two part time jobs.

Anyway, I wonder if WHO had to work and the lifetime limits depended on the state.

[elehhhhna]

43. You're right.

And the advent of foster-farming as a business opportunity is one of our uglier secrets.

[Stand and Fight]

46. You're mostly right... Sadly.

I was a foster child, ward of the state if you will, in Nevada from 1988 to 1998. In that time period I experienced some of the most awful experiences of my life. The foster care system is very much a system that is corrupt and potentially very harmful. Most of the foster kids I knew -- and all of the ones I was in a group home with -- have turned to drugs, alcohol, prostitution, and all matter of other social ills. The years under Clinton were certainly not golden, but they are a far cry BETTER than the monstrous beasts we exist under now.

[stickdog]

54. I agree 99%.

People born or who have skillfully/luckily (and every sane person needs to realize that both can and do apply) become rich have always enjoyed (almost) every conceivable advantage in the USA.

I also agree with hedda 100% on this:

What this disaster has revealed (not just created but revealed) is beyond dystopian, beyond social darwinism, beyond everything but the blackest science fiction ... bleaker by far than Philip K. Dick's darkest imaginings. We truly are far, far beyond thunderdome.

[La Coliniere]

15. FEMA = Federal Expectancy Management Agency

Who will be accountable in the long run for this horrorshow? Not a single person, watch and see. Compassionate conservatives? How do you spell repulsive?

[IDemo]

16. Triage for the Complete Idiot (EXPECTANCY Room??!!)

This points to the extreme nature of what is broken with the federal emergency management system. Severe diabetic high blood glucose/keto-acidosis is a treatable emergency (trust me, I know). To prevent the administration of a simple dose of insulin and requisite rehydration therapy for lack of paperwork is nothing less than an outrage, easily grounds for a manslaughter charge. Manslaughter, however, is apparently accompanied by a pResidential guitar backing these days.

If the whole story behind the federal mis-management before, during, and after Katrina is ever written, I'm afraid it will paint the entire US as an 'expectancy' zone. The Keystone Cops would have appeared as tightly disciplined and ready as Navy Seals when compared to the disastrous response of Bush and FEMA. And now, BushCorps does the only thing it can to try to save face and maintain a semblance of control: fling billions of dollars aimlessly, and stir in still another nauseating and inappropriate reference to 9/11.

It's not gonna work this time, Karl. This one is going to hurt a guy like you even more than a kidney stone.

[renate]

53. I have a copy of my medical license in my wallet

And I assume the physician or physicians wanting to help had similar documentation. So if this is a not-licensed-in-Louisiana kind of issue--that is, if FEMA doesn't recognize licenses from other states during emergencies like this--that is ILL.

[proud patriot]

18. Horrific

:mad:

[Carla in Ca]

22. Let's get a campaign going to get Chertoff.

He must go. He is the one who really dropped the ball.

[elehhhhna]

44. This goes all the way to the top. Bush must go too.

[Carla in Ca]

50. Oh, I absolutely agree

but we can have some fun chipping away at the foundation. Eventually, the statue will fall.

[Polethebear]

23. Oh lord,lord,lord..............

WE ARE LIVING IN A WORLD OF IDIOTS!!!!!

You know,I was reallllllllly begining to buy into the genocide deal at first(still not ruling it out) but now I honestly think FEMA and perhaps our entire goverment are morons.


How does this happen??? Have we contibuted to it by voting lazy(yes,I'm including dems in this) politicans who arent willing to find competent pepole???

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. Ok ok, let me get everybody acquainted with

Disaster \ war medicine, not to defend FEMA here but....

The triage protocols are pretty clear.. and if you have lets say 300 patients and you only have 10 doctors and 20 nurses, and not enough medical supplies, you literally don't treat those that are deemed non salvageable and treat those you can save with the resources you have.

That said... FEMA got the offer of many doctors on the scene but the DMAT team, instead of incorporating them into the team (and giving them a fast course \OJT on wartime medicine) they said no, we don't need them resources because we are afraid of liability... there are many problems with this picture... way too many problems.

that said, the fact taht they put black taged patients in teh morgue essencially letting them die does not shock me... it is standard disaster medicine or war time medicine, coming all the way from WW I when Triage was first used.

It means to do the most good for the largest number of patients and yes this means at times not treating a two year old with a head injury (who was already almost dead) but treating the 60 year old with the fractured femur... yes I once again will see those empty eyes staring into the sky... thanks guys, but I was the triage officer that day. (No not at NOLA)

[expatriate]

28. thanks for posting this

I have thought of this is recent days. I know these stories are horrific, and I make no apologies for FEMA and their obvious endless red tape and turf-defense tactics, but people really do not understand wartime/emergency triage. It's a brutal thing, but in such situations, resources simply can't be expended on patients with certain conditions and with a pretty low chance of survival no matter what treatment is given.

Now, as for someone suffering from dehydration and diabetes being triaged out? I don't think so - that was misdiagnosis, obviously, unless it had gone so long that there was severe brain damage underway.

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. Diabetes

how could it get out of control? If the patient was already in Ketoacidosis (Hi as in very high blood sugar), at times it takes a full ICU, with concomitant resources, to treat. You don't have that in this situation.

Dehydration... that can and should be treated with an IV... but I was not there, so I have no opinion on the DMAT Team. Except they should have incorporated the docs and nurses who offered help.

What is clear is that CPR is not EVER started in war time medicine... yes all medical personnel is trained on it, but let me see at a bare minimum it will take out two people... usually four to five... that could instead treat patients that will live.

That kid, would have taken four of my medics to transport as well as precious O2 tanks, I did not have that luxury that day... I placed the tag, cut it to black, placed the kid on a back board and put her to the side. When I next did my triage run... I marked the tag as DOA and approximate time of death for the coroner... and covered that small body affer closing her eyes, with a sheet, and moved on...

Yes disaster and military medicine is brutal.

You have to live with the decisions...

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. What enrages me about the doc who started CPR

and was stopped by FEMA is not the fact they stopped him from doing CPR.. that was appropriate and a good call... that was a non salvageable patient...

The book says that you don't incorporate strangers into the team (liability lack of knowledge of procedures, what have you) But this was not a normal situation. They could and should have incorporated these people and the person in charge could have given them in the middle of that hell a ten minute brief, and placed them side by side with an experienced team member.

Granted an orthopedist working in the hospital setting is NOT used to triage protocols that say you shall not give O2 to an agonal patient... but you can still use this doctor to set bones, or clean a wound, just keep him away from your Triage area where he will go back to his every day practice and start CPR... Hey this has been done in other massive disasters... and this is exactly your 1% where your protocols need a little creativity..

[Polethebear]

29. Ok,nadin

First of all,Hi

What would(Ok,water being clean or not,nonwithstanding) it have to hurt to give those pepole some water??? If nothing else it could made their last momments a little easier.


PS-Now that I think about it,my father and I were talking about something simallar a couple of weeks ago.


Thanks for the info and god love ya,cause I'm sure that wasn't an easy job.

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. Depends as I said dehydration is easy to treat

an IV, if conscious by mouth... and if all they have is dehydration they will bounce... so fast it will astound you... I somehow doubt they black tagged any of these patients for mere dehydration though, call me silly, but I doubt it.

Now patients who are triaged as unsalvagable, most people don't go back because you have many, many MORE patients to treat.

Here is where they could have used some of the civies that offered to help... as I said, if they are honest the post incident review should be brutal... we always were brutal with each other.

[stickdog]

55. How can anyone defend this?

It is not WARTIME -- unless, of course, you count an elective war sold to the US public using a tissue of blatant lies. Our potential federal and volunteer medical resources FAR, FAR exceed the total need in the Gulf disaster region.

The scope of this disaster was massive. But this scope most certainly does NOT remotely excuse the existence of triage-determined DEATH CAMPS at MORGUE facilities more than a full week after the full scope of the Katrina disaster was nationally obvious.

[mondo joe]

42. Please don't blame this on triage. Triage means using your resources

as best you can to meet the demand. FEMA didn't do that - FEMA SHRUNK the resources.

[Stand and Fight]

47. I completely disagree with you...

I was a Combat Lifesaver in the Army for four years, and while it is important that you triage patients, you're ignoring the crucial fact that they were TURNING AWAY medical aid.

You use all available personnel and resources in an emergency or wartime environment -- you DO NOT turn them away god-dammit.

[Nothing Without Hope]

25. The one at the New Orleans airport would be Dr. Perlmutter. Here is his

story as reported by this Baton Rouge news venue, which I've been told is a solid source. (Unless there was MORE THAN ONE doctor turned away from treating these desperately ill patients.)

People died because of this.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1786336
thread title: Doctor says FEMA ordered him to stop treating hurricane victims

FEMA also confiscated emergency supplies en route to Methodist Hospital in New Orleans - patients died as a result of this too:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4777505
thread title: Herbert/NYT: "Sick and Abandoned" FEMA blocked emergency hospital

[Nothing Without Hope]

27. It's another tragedy that the American Red Cross has been "bushed" too:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4824910
thread title: Diminishing returns: DeKalb County (GA) CEO asks the Red Cross to LEAVE

[kath]

30. "Culture of Life"

[Erika]

32. Bush's America

says it all.

[6000eliot]

35. This kind of thing is the reason they don't want

an independent investigation.

[Chalco]

37. As I said in another thread, my brother, an OB was turned away

as well. Said he wasn't licensed in LA so he couldn't help.

[qanda]

39. This is a set up

To prove that we need lawsuit reform and a rollback of the protections that we have against malpractice. I've heard this story repeated so many times over the past few weeks and it seems those who wanted to help were always given the same excuse of why they couldn't help. Sounds like we are getting ready to be set up again. I can hear the talking points now of how many people in Katrina died needlessly because of the fear of lawsuits.

[elehhhhna]

45. ding ding we have a winner!

[KittyWampus]

49. Qanda, Simple Antidote Is Invoke CLINTON'S FEMA!

it is really that simple and DU'ers need to start repeating Clinton's name constantly to rebute this crap.

Clinton's FEMA was funded and ready for the floods in 93 AND 97. They saved lives.

[Inland]

51. Can't sue the gov. regardless. That's why the FEMA guy let them die.

There isn't any more liability for letting a doctor, an unqualified doctor, or nobody save these people. YOu can't sue the government.

The reason why the FEMA guy didn't allow it was either becuase he misunderstood FEMA rules like an idiot or he correctly understood idiotic FEMA rules. Nothing to do with liability.

[markus]

40. Souls in the great machine

As I read the endless litany of FEMA’s obstruction and interference with the business of saving lives in New Orleans, I find myself struggling to understand how anyone could stand over the dying and tell a medical doctor to stop helping, because he wasn’t authorized

It’s one thing for a Chertoff or a Brown to dismiss the suffering and death of people who are of no consequence to them. It is another entirely to stand on the tarmac at Louis Armstrong International Airport and direct a doctor to stop saving people, and to have those people die .

Like most southerners, I tend to think in analogy and story. I have struggled to find a storyline that places such acts into a human and historical context. The analogy that most quickly comes to mind will most likely anger people, as it comes from NAZI Germany.

Before you stop reading, know this: I am not referring to the monumental evil of those who led that nation into the darkest corners of human history. It is not the naked, glaring evil of those who planned the death camps or herded the innocent into the gas chambers that comes to mind.

It is the banal routine, a conditioned indifference, of those who scheduled and loaded the trains for Auschwitz I am thinking of.

A great many people, in the immediate aftermath of the storm, reacted to the survivors on the ground in the city this way: we would never behave as they did. They would cheerfully sit and dehydrate or starve until help arrived.

If challenged, I suspect that many of these same comfortable Americans would challenge the idea that they would have behave as FEMA did. If that is true—“people like us would not behave in that way”--then where did the FEMA ground troops come from?

What disturbs me most is not the criminal indifference of a Chertoff or a Brown. It is that those on the ground so willingly do what is obviously wrong because they are told so by their leaders. They believe that their wiser betters know what to do. They are merely following orders and procedures. That the consequence of those orders and procedures is suffering and death does not occur to them. If it does, perhaps they tell themselves that,--though some may die at their feet--it is done so that more may be saved elsewhere.

Left to FEMA’s hands, no rescue workers would have started up the stairs of the Twin Towers. It would have been too dangerous. No fire fighters would have hastened to Chernobyl and valiantly worked to their certain death. The wounded and the traumatized would have been left on the sidewalks to fend for themselves until they could be dispersed out-of-sight and out-of-mind. And FEMA would not have lacked for ready hands to do this work.

To those who say “we would never behave that way”, let me ask: if you think you would not take water and food for your children, would you leave other people to die at your feet if it violated procedures? If the orders came, would you (perhaps grudgingly) load those survivors onto cattle cars to a destination unknown?

The greatest and most frightening lesson of Katrina is not that people would steal water and food to survive, or that our current leadership is monumentally indifferent to the fate of our population.

The lesson is this: those who think “such things could never happen here” are wrong. Many would willingly schedule the trains and load the cars with their fellow Americans just as they loaded cast off clothes and can goods for Baton Rouge and Houston. That the “good” Americans are capable of the indifference and occasional malevolence that followed should frighten us all.


More here: http://wetbankguide.blogspot.com/">wetbankguide.blogspot.com

[lindisfarne]

52. crooksandliars.com has a video clip of the cnn interview

[ladylibertee]

56. I actually saw this. It's not the first time he was on and it's a true story

[ladylibertee]

57. I actually saw this. It's not the first time he was on and it's a true story