The Great Physician

A doctor and two nurses who cared for patients in the aftermath of Katrina were arrested yesterday and charged with second degree murder for intentionally administering lethal doses of morphine and Versed (a sedative) to patients too sick to be evacuated following the disaster. Louisiana State Attorney Charles Foti said, “This is not euthanasia; it is homicide.” The doctor allegedly told a nurse administrator three days after Katrina hit that that the patients remaining at the hospital would not survive and “a decision had been made to administer lethal doses.”

The investigation will be ongoing and very difficult. Some health care experts point out that administering morphine and Versed to critically ill patients suffering in 100-degree heat was an indicated response. “No doubt it was appropriate to receive some morphine. The question is, did they give too much?” said Dr. Maria Silveira, a specialist in end-of-life ethics. These issues are complex ones, made even more so by the political complexities following the Katrina disaster. It is likely that we’ll he hearing more about this story for months to come.

One of the lines of the Hippocratic Oath is “to never do harm to anyone.” (Of course, the next line is, “To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause his death. Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion.” We’ll leave euthanasia and abortion for another blog, OK?) If these health care workers really did intentionally kill people, for whatever reason, then that is a violation of the trust we placed in them and they should be prosecuted. If the State of Louisiana is making political hay at the expense of dedicated medical professionals serving in an impossibly difficult situation (one which the State of Louisiana may have exacerbated by their neglect), then that is unconscionable as well.

We are especially outraged when people entrusted with the special responsibility to serve abuse that trust to hurt the very ones that they are to serve. That was one of the things that really got the juices of the prophets flowing (See Isaiah 1:23, Amos Micah 3:11, 7:3). The princes, priests and prophets of Israel were extorting bribes and promoting themselves rather than serving the people. Jesus says much the same thing about the religious leaders of his day. Jesus blasts the Scribes and Pharisees for their self-promotion that serves to slam the door of heaven in the faces of those who would seek God (see Matt 23:13, Luke 11:52). Like Old Testament leaders, the scribes and Pharisees leaders were supposed to serve people and show the way to heaven. But their legalistic piety only promoted their own status and served to obscure the face of God.

Has not the church today been given the sacred trust to help people see God? Is not our job to point to the Great Physican who can heal sin-sick souls? When the church turns inward on itself and promotes its own interests and fusses and feuds over its own issues, are we not violating that sacred trust given us by Christ? Jesus is the Great Physician who has sent us out into a sick and dying world. Are we seeking serve that world, or are we too busy erecting barriers to cross and hoops to jump through that keep the sick away?