A frightening new FBI investigation is alleging that a Dallas, Texas-area hospice ordered nurses to increase drug dosages to patients in order to speed their deaths.
Fox News reports the FBI affidavit saying that higher doses of pain medication were administered to at least four patients at Novus Health Services in Frisco, Texas. The details are chilling: The founder of the company, Brad Harris, is alleged to have sent text messages that said, “You need to make this patient go bye-bye.”
The Dallas Morning News also reported that Harris made comments of “if this f— would just die.” An employee told agents that in 2013, Harris asked a worker to “administer an overdose of medication to a hospice patient … by increasing the patient’s medication dosage to approximately four times the maximum allowed.”
Harris allegedly also told administrators during a lunch meeting that he wanted to “find patients who would die within 24 hours,” according to the investigation.
In at least one instance, a nurse refused orders to increase pain medication dosages, the warrant said.
Investigators did not indicate whether any deaths resulted from the overdoses, according to Fox News.
Keep up with the latest pro-life news and information on Twitter. Follow @LifeNewsHQ
The report continues: “The FBI investigation of Novus, which included interviewing several employees, began in 2014 and initially focused on allegations that the company sought federal reimbursements for patients recruited by Novus who didn’t qualify for services, according to KXAS.”
These allegations make it easy to hypothesize that Harris was deliberately killing patients for financial gain. It does, after all, cost money to take care of hospice patients. That is why some pro-life advocates are worried that the situation here is analogous to the consequences of legalizing assisted suicide or euthanasia.
If it becomes in hospitals’ or doctors’ interest for patients to die, some believe that the patient-doctor relationship could be poisoned. Ryan T. Anderson wrote in a piece for the Heritage Foundation that assisted suicide “endangers the weak and marginalized in society. Where it has been allowed, safeguards purporting to minimize this risk have proved inadequate.”
Though the cases are not identical to one another because the Novus incident is alleged murder and not assisted suicide, there are worthy points to be drawn here. Some hospitals are killing patients for financial gain even though it is immoral and illegal to do so. It is hard to imagine it not happening more if it is legal.
