…from the St. Rita’s Nursing Home trial, where the owners are accused of 35 counts of negligent homicide for refusing to evacuate the nursing home in the path of Hurricane Katrina.
A Dr. Brobson Lutz, identified as an expert in internal medicine and public health, and a paid expert witness for the defense, provides the money quote, in the Lake Charles American Press:
“If you evacuate, somebody is going to die,” Lutz said. You’re dealing with a frail, elderly population.”
The large percentage of “special needs” patients at St. Rita’s – those in need of extra medical attention – would have been even more at risk, Lutz said.
This proves one thing: even a doctor will whore himself out to say ludicrous things in court if the money is right. In Dr. Lutz’ case, his personal thirty pieces of silver added up to $5,000 in expert witness fees.
Apparently, abandoning your self-respect and your common sense comes pretty cheaply these days.
The patients who weren’t bedbound could have been evacuated in buses or wheelchair transport vans. The most frail patients, the bedbound ones, could have gone by ambulance with an EMT in attendance.
And trust me, there were ambulances available at the time.
You can bet that in the months prior to Katrina, they weren’t all that concerned with transporting bedridden patients to the Emergency Department on the flimsiest of medical pretenses. It happens all the time from nursing homes.
So why were they so afraid to evacuate them ahead of a freaking hurricane?
Answer: money. Always is.
