Now, I'm not against legalizing euthanasia, and I certainly don't think that charges should be filed, but it shouldn't be the doctor's call to make. The least that can be done, however, is to call these patients what they were -- victims of the hurricane.
That said, there are apparently many other victims of Katrina that haven't been counted yet.
cieldumort claims that the number of those who have died as a result of Katrina is being underreported, and that those bodies who are unidentified or who died of natural causes or violence relating to the hurricane are not being added into the official numbers, and that there may be strong political motivations for keeping these numbers low.As these claims were unsupported, I did a basic examination of them, and it appears they do indeed have merit. Specifically, the current official death count is 792, which includes 558 from Louisiana, 218 from Mississippi, two from Alabama and 14 from Florida. These figures, however, are inconsistant with this article, which claims there are approximately 500 unidentified bodies in Louisiana alone. Unless we are to assume that nearly every body pulled out of Louisiana are unidentifiable, then it seems reasonable to assume that these 500 unidentified bodies are not currently included yet in the official number of reported dead.
Based on this ratio of identifiable vs. unidentified bodies, it's safe to assume that around 1500 bodies have actually been recovered so far, with additional deaths due to natural causes, post-Katrina violence, euthenasia, or other possible causes.
I welcome any additional research that others can submit which may help to either prove or counter this preliminary conclusion. Expect more research from me into this subject in the future.
