[Olabisi Adekoya]

1. According to the New York Times Magazine ethics columnist, the government, Tenet, and the hospital should have been more prepared to remove the patient when they knew a storm was on the way. Health professionals sometimes chose to euthanize patients rather than abandon those who couldn’t be moved when proper preparation wasn’t made, despite the fact that they were supposed to predict the crisis as well as to avoid it rather than the catastrophe, at least on a local level, from the component particulars, including the political, cultural, and social factors. However, in really exceptional situations, they might be able to justify a mercy killing.

2. According to John Thiele’s assessment of the storm and the situation at Memorial, he was confident that the three patients who couldn’t be transported wouldn’t make it to safety. He insisted on helping and administered stronger dosages of morphine and midazolam than he usually does in the intensive care unit to the patients. He comforted them by holding their hands and saying, “It’s okay to go.” The bulky black man with the laboured breathing had survived longer than the majority of patients, who usually passed away shortly after receiving their medications. The man continued to breathe, so Thiele administered a second dose of morphine, thinking that 100 mg might help. His weak circulation prevented the medicine from reaching him, so he covered his face with a towel. He later recalled that it took a minute for the man to stop breathing and pass away. His desire to suffocate the man had conflicted with every cell in his body. He never imagined having to do it under any circumstances, but he did. Although he had believed what he had done to be correct, he instantly began to second-guess if it had actually been the proper thing to do.

3. Virginia claimed that Rider shared a similar moral anger about what occurred at Memorial. Although it was as fundamental as the principles of her Catholic faith, she wasn’t a strict thinker. The then-imprisoned Dr. Jack Kevorka had built a killing machine and assisted patients in dying, but she believed the difference was that the patients had requested his services, whereas the doctors at Memorial, as far as Rider knew, had acted without consent. She could understand that some people in certain circumstances would want to be put to death, but she had no issue with his illegal actions.
Like Rider, Schafer was a Catholic who did not hold to absolutes when it came to life and death. As a lawyer, he had created living wills for a lot of people who wanted to express their final wishes in writing before anything went wrong. After growing older and giving the situation more thought, he had done this for himself. That decision had to be made by him; he did not want someone else to do it for him. He wanted the life-supporting plug to be yanked. Given their medical circumstances, he didn’t feel it was appropriate for him to offer opinions, but he could see why some of the memorial’s patients had been given the medicine.

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