Thanks to Joe Stramondo, who found this article and alerted me to it. (Joe is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University where he is specializing in bioethics, disability studies, and moral psychology. He has presented at meetings of the Society for Disability Studies, the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities, and the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association. He has published in the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics and Social Philosophy Today. Finally, he has been active in the disability movement through ADAPT, Little People of America, the Connecticut State Independent Living Council, and, most recently, his employment with Disability Rights Texas.)
Right now, there’s not nearly enough detail on this case to get a real idea of just what we’re looking at – or the scope of it. The initial charges and info are alarming enough, though. Here are some excerpts from CNN’s story “Brazilian doctor killed 7 patients to free up hospital beds, police say“:
A Brazilian doctor appeared in court for allegedly killing seven patients to free up hospital beds in the southeast city of Curitiba.
Virginia Helena Soares de Souza recruited a group of doctors to help administer lethal doses of anesthetics, sedatives and painkillers, according to authorities.
In addition, the group allegedly altered oxygen levels for patients, leading to deaths by asphyxiation, police said.
Seven other health care professionals have been charged in the case.
There is an active and serious investigation going on, with some news stories claiming the body count could total 300 or more. Back to the CNN story:
Her lawyer, Elias Mattar Assad, said she will prove that her orders in the ICU were backed and justified by medical literature. Lobato, however, said some of the patients were awake and conscious moments before the drugs were administered.
Meghan Schrader, a disability activist who has given several papers at the Society of Disability Studies and have a forthcoming article on intersections between ableist stereotypes, eugenic ideas and film music in the 1950s. In an online exchange on Facebook, she said she was bothered by the sentence above, stressing that patients “were awake and conscious” when the drugs were allegedly administered:
“the patients were awake and conscious moments before the drugs were administered.” So, it would have been ok to kill them if they were unconscious…?
That’s a good question, as is the one she asks about the last line of the article, which says “Euthanasia is considered a crime in Brazil.” I don’t think I could improve on Meghan’s response to that:
Uh…so…if euthanasia had been legal, the doctor’s actions would have been ok? Why the need to differentiate this kind of murder from any other kind of cold blooded murder?
We should be grateful that – at least for the moment – no one is calling the alleged murders “mercy killings.” Research on serial killings in medical facilities indicates that the killers have much darker motives than “compassion,” a trait not common among serial killers.
There is no mercy in a mercy killing. Only Killing.