NEW ORLEANS, July 23 (UPI) -- Powerful drugs have been found in the bodies of people who died in New Orleans hospitals in the days after Hurricane Katrina.
A New Orleans surgeon and two nurses were arrested in an inquiry into the deaths. Investigators have analyzed tissue from the bodies of four people who died at Memorial Medical Center, and found traces of the painkillers morphine and midazolam, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported.
Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr., whose office spearheaded the inquiry, said at a news conference that neither of those painkillers had been prescribed to those patients.
Due to an unavailability of blood, tissue had to be taken from brains, muscles and livers, the newspaper said.
Some experts have questioned whether the evidence will be strong enough to prosecute a case, since the information was gleaned from bodies that had begun to decompose in the frenetic post-hurricane conditions.
The presence of morphine and midazolam might be "suggestive evidence that they were inappropriately put into the persons' bodies," said Dr. John Hunsaker III, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners.
