The report of this event was discussed at length at DU when it first emerged in the days after Katrina hit. Many refused to believe it, and the reasons given by the medical professionals allegedly involved for what they were reported to have done.
Link to a thread on the story:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1772316"Patients put down (Euthanasia in New Orleans)"
A layperson who was assisting the medical staff in the hospital seems to have been the first to tell the story, to his family in England and to families of the patients in question -- by way of assuring them that their relatives did not suffer.
A story linked to in that earlier thread reported what some families of the patients in question said:
Their families believe their confessions are an indictment of the appalling failure of US authorities to help those in desperate need after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, claiming thousands of lives and making 500,000 homeless.
One reason they apparently had to make this choice was that they did not have access to the hospital's pharmacy, which had been locked down because of violent individuals and gangs engaged in looting for drugs. This left them with a supply of morphine that could have relieved their patients' horrific pain only for a couple of days at most -- and they had no expectations of being rescued from the situation by that time. They chose to use the morphine to assist in the patients' deaths, which were in all cases
inevitable even had the hurricane not occurred. Good for them, I said then and I say now.
This situation was of course a direct result of governments' complete failure to take appropriate action in a timely manner to help the people who had suffered the immediate and direct effects of the hurricane and were in desperate need of basic things like food and water -- and also
security. They were simply left to suffer the foreseeable secondary effects of losing all the normal infrastructure of a community that keeps people safe -- police, streetlights, public buildings, neighbours, roads, sidewalks, telephones, their own homes -- that protect them from the violent and lawless element that exists in any community and takes the opportunities presented to victimize others in a variety of ways.
It was obvious at the time that the conditions in this hospital, like conditions all over the region, were horrific, and some people were having to make the kinds of decisions and do the kinds of things that no one would ever want to do and no one should ever have to do -- but that they were doing what they felt morally bound to do, even if it appeared to be technically contrary to their professional ethics. That conflict arises, in fact, for any health professional faced with the implacable suffering vs. assisted dying scenario.
I too hope that this travesty is rejected by the people of New Orleans, and the US as a whole. For a society to blame the people whom it left to their own devices, to do jobs that it was impossible to do, and who did what they could despite the risks to their own safety and well-being, in fact, is just another link in the chain of victimization.