From a Doctor Currently in New Orleans

This is a fascinating account. One part stands out especially. At the hotel he's currently staying in, there are a number of doctors from an HIV conference in town (apparently the Ritz Carleton is the "hotel of last resort" after others sustained damage in the storm):

We have commandered the world famous French Quarter Bar to turn into an makeshift clinic. There is a team of about 7 doctors and PA and pharmacists. We anticipate that this will be the major medical facility in the central business district and French Quarter.

Our biggest adventure today was raiding the Walgreens on Canal under police

escort. The pharmacy was dark and fool of water. We basically scooped the entire drug sets into gargace bags and removed them. All uner police

excort. The looters had to be held back at gun point. After a dose of

prophylactic Cipro I hope to be fine.

[9/30/05 update: I've closed comments on this post. There is an orchestrated smear campaign being conducted against the doctor who authored the quoted letter. I don't know whether he deserves it or not, but I do know that the people conducting it won't identify themselves and won't go away. Having grown tired of weighing the moral ambiguities of editing comments for libel, I've opted to nuke the comment section on this post. My apologies to readers and commenters alike. I believe that private citizens don't deserve to be attacked on the internet anonymously.]