By reader acclaim:
In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn’t registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “I begged him to let me continue,” said Perlmutter, who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. “People were dying, and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers. Two patients died in front of me.
“I showed him (the U.S. Coast Guard official in charge) my medical credentials. I had tried to get through to FEMA for 12 hours the day before and finally gave up. I asked him to let me stay until I was replaced by another doctor, but he refused. He said he was afraid of being sued. I informed him about the Good Samaritan laws and asked him if he was willing to let people die so the government wouldn’t be sued, but he would not back down. I had to leave.”
In a formal response to Perlmutter’s story, FEMA said it does not accept the services of volunteer physicians:
“We have a cadre of physicians of our own,” FEMA spokesman Kim Pease said Thursday. “They are the National Disaster Medical Team. … The voluntary doctor was not a credentialed FEMA physician and, thus, was subject to law enforcement rules in a disaster area.”
However, Perlmutter says once back in Baton Rouge his group
went to state health officials who finally got them certified — a simple process that took only a few seconds.
“I found numerous other doctors in Baton Rouge waiting to be assigned and others who were sent away, and there was no shortage of need,” he said.
(Laurie Smith Anderson, The Advocate (Baton Rouge), Sept. 16; Toby Harnden, “‘I could have saved her life but was denied permission'”, Daily Telegraph (UK), Sept. 18).
Guesting at The Agitator, Rogier van Bakel (Sept. 18) describes FEMA’s actions as “heartless, inept, craven”. Correspondent and New Orleanian C.G. Moore (see Sept. 2, Sept. 6) offers a somewhat different take:
From reading the story, it sounds like both sides represent opposite extremes: the overly cautious FEMA official, and the maverick medical professional.
It’s sad to see bureaucrats still genuflecting before the Altar of Protocol in these circumstances, but even people with the noblest intentions can cause more harm than good if they’re not part of a coordinated effort.
More: Rogier van Bakel writes in, responding to Moore’s comment:
Wow. I would hate to be the one to explain the latter point to the dead woman’s family.
This wasn’t an academic, hypothetical question posed in ethics class. This was about a trained physician who was administering his healing work to a dying woman. That any sentient human being can pull out a rulebook under those circumstances and order the lifesaving work to stop, no ifs or buts, defies comprehension.
Surely C.G. Moore can see the tragic absurdity here.
If that had been his wife or his four-month-old son dying on the tarmac, I wonder if he would have told the physician to stop treatment because, after all, the doctor wasn’t “part of a coordinated effort.”
Also, as a point of law, won’t FEMA possibly be at the wrong end of a suit because the official DIDN’T allow the treatment?
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