Playing God?

In times of tranquillity when your life is charted nicely in front you, you can talk. You would say, this is how one should do things, what is right, what is wrong, what is kosher, what is just and what is humane. The real test of humanity comes when civilisation is on the brink of collapse when law and order are in shambles.

At times of emergency when the social order collapses and everyone is hanging on to their dear lives on a thread, decency, common courtesy and even humanity is a misfit. Does it really? Or is it the place where humanity is put to the acid test?

Heard over a podcast about an incidence at a hospital during the time Hurrican Katrina hit New Orleans. The medical staff thought they were well prepared to handle the crisis, but they soon realised that panic button was hit when the levee broke on the second day. The hospital was flooded and by the third day, power supply was disconnected after the water reached the crucial areas. Mishandling of rescue services saw patients and medical providers stuck with very sick patients and depletion of backup power supply to sustain life. The worse hit were the chronically ill and the ones needing life support. Oxygen supply came to a halt, and the staff had the unenviable task of triaging who deserved the much-needed elixir of life- oxygen. They also had to decide who deserved to be saved first when helicopters eventually arrived. As transporting patients to the helipad on the top floor without elevators was a challenge, morbidly obese patients had to be left behind. Sanitation was a problem; toilets were non-functional.

Many of the patients on life support were literally breathless and dying. Very ill patients were in misery, knowing that they would be left behind due to space constraint in the rescue vessels. Some terminally ill patients were quite miserable. It was in this instance that someone thought of and perhaps administered drugs to the effect of relieving them of their miseries. In other words, maybe higher than usual doses of analgesic in the form opioids were given which proved fatal.

When the dust finally settled on the aftermath of the Katrina brouhaha, an investigation was initiated to determine any mala fide. Even though nobody was convicted, it did, however, spur discussions on the difficult decisions that the health personnel have to endure in their daily workplace and emergency situations, what more in a war zone.

 http://www.radiolab.org/story/playing-god/