Euthanasia in New Orleans

This report (CNN.com) certainly is troubling:

Three days after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, staff members at the city's Memorial Medical Center had repeated discussions about euthanizing patients they thought might not survive the ordeal, according to a doctor and nurse manager who were in the hospital at the time.

The Louisiana attorney general's office is investigating allegations that mercy killings occurred and has requested that autopsies be performed on all 45 bodies taken from the hospital after the storm.

This part of the story caught my attention:

[Fran] Butler [a nurse manager] also told CNN that a doctor approached her at one point and discussed the subject of putting patients to sleep, and "made the comment to me on how she was totally against it and wouldn't do it."

Butler said she did not see anyone perform a mercy killing, and she said because of her personal beliefs, she would never have participated.

I am confident that I share Ms. Butler's "personal beliefs," and I am glad that they would have prevented her from participating in euthanizing patients.  Still, it is interesting that Ms. Butler cited her "personal beliefs," rather than the homicide laws of Louisiana.