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Two Years Past, Has Anything Changed?

While conservative and liberal thinkers might continue to disagree about familiar ethical issues like suitable limits on enhancement technologies, they should find common cause in the need to care for a fragile and increasingly ailing planet. ...[H]uman happiness and well-being is dependent upon a complex ecological system in which we are all inextricably linked, a system in which we are all actors and patients, doers and sufferers. We ignore these brute facts at our peril. -Jonathan Moreno, AJOB 5(5)

August 29 marked the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Trials are on-going, other cases never made it to a grand jury. Only 10% of the 70,000 destroyed homes have been rebuild; half of the temporary FEMA trailers provided are still in use.

When I was at ASBH last year, I met and ended up talking to a physician from New Orleans who had stayed through Katrina, trying to practice medicine from the hospital roof, parking lot, anywhere he could. He had attended sessions on disaster ethics, preparedness, what we learned from the wake of Katrina, and I remember most clearly his anger. Anger at being reduced to numbers, sure, but mostly anger at being forgotten.

For a short time after Katrina, disaster prep was the hot trend. It was sexy, it was timely, it had glamour attached to it, and disaster ethics followed with it. But the winds changed, we became preoccupied with other things, and focus shifted.

So now where are we, where is the Gulf Coast, and has anything really changed? Are we, as bioethicists, as public health workers, doctors, nurses, politicians, communities, individuals, any more ready to handle a disaster on Katrina's scale? How can we be, when it doesn't even seem like we've figured out how to pick up the pieces.

-Kelly Hills (with thanks to G. Williams for the reminder)