An Anthropologist on Mars
I am a bit behind the times, the next book I have on my pile of must reads is from 1995, according to Wikipedia.
An Anthropologist on Mars is written by neurologist Oliver Sacks. I’ve been looking forward to reading it for awhile, but it’s not the kind of book that’s easy to read, so I’ve been putting it off.
It does feature one of my favourite people, Temple Grandin who is an American woman with autism. She coined the phrase Anthropologist on Mars because that’s how she often feels interacting with neurotypical people.
One of the things I’ve enjoyed about one of my current subjects is that it encourages me to see explore issues from an ethical and legal perspective. One of the issues my lecturer mentioned last week was people on Do Not Resuscitate orders and Hurricane Katrina.
In 2003 I visited New Orleans and fell in love with the city, the people, the architecture, the atmosphere. I had a fantastic time staying right on Bourbon Street. I caught the ferry across the Mississippi River to Algiers, was driven across Lake Ponchartrain and toured the above ground cemeteries.
I sipped on mint juleps and ran around with an Australian guy I met on tour. When I say ran, I mean ran – I sprained my ankle and spent the train ride to Atlanta resting and icing it. I went into voodoo shops, boutique beer bars and listened to jazz. I saw grand old mansions with mardi gras beads flung in trees out the front.
I stayed at the Royal Sonesta Hotel and swam in the pool to relieve the humidity I wasn’t used to. My almost waist length hair took on a life of it’s own and dragged me down.
So when I heard about Hurricane Katrina, I was devastated. New Orleans was also really the first place in the US that I’d seen obvious poverty. Children as young as Willow begging for money at night out the front of drug stores was a shock after the clean sanitised West Coast. To make matters worse, Hurricane Katrina had hit a couple of days before the day that social security payments are made.
I could see in my mind, the riverside mall where I bought a new suitcase being washed away, the levies of Lake Ponchartrain being swallowed by dirty water. New Orleans already had a unique smell, I couldn’t imagine it getting any better.
So when my lecturer talked about doctors and nurses being accused of hastening patients deaths who were on Do Not Resuscitate orders, I was intrigued. The concept of triage, where those who are most likely to survive are prioritised for treatment certainly applied here, but to actually euthanase patients is another matter altogether. Part of the problem was that people were divided into three groups iin order to evacuate them, people in group 1 would be evacuated first, people in group 2 would be evacuated next and people in group 3 would be last. These people were incontinent, reliant on IV fluids for hydration and had Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders.
The problem began when patients who were otherwise reasonably healthy and ambulatory were put in the third category, simply because they’d had the foresight to organise a DNR in the past. It could be argued that it was more humane to euthanase deathbound patients, rather than leaving them to rot in a carcass of a hospital that had no power, no water and few staff. Another complicating factor for the rescue team was that many of the patients were obese – between 300 and 380 pounds. I don’t speak Imperial, but I know that is a lot.
Two nurses and a doctor were arrested for second degree murder and also had civil wrongful death suits brought against them. Charges against the nurses were dropped for evidence. The grand jury would not indict the doctor(find them guilty) and she now campaigns for legislated protection from criminal or civil suits for health workers in times of emergency or disaster.
This situation is an interesting nexus between medical, legal, ethical and moral issues.
