Radiolab - The Good Samaritan

On a Tuesday afternoon back in the summer of 2017, Scotty Hatton and Scottie Wightman both made a decision to help someone in need. They both paid a price for their actions that day, which have led to a legal, moral, and scientific puzzle about how we balance accountability and forgiveness. In this episode, we go to Bath County, Kentucky, where, as one health official put it, opioids have created “a hole the size of Kentucky.” We talk to the people on all sides of this story about stemming the tide of overdoses, we wrestle with the science of poison and fear, and we try to figure out when the drive to protect and help those around us should rise above the law. This story was reported by Peter Andrey Smith with Matt Kielty, and produced by Matt Kielty. Special thanks to Earl Willis, Bobby Ratliff, Ronnie Goldie, Megan Fisher, Alan Caudill, Nick Jones, Dan Wermerling, Terry Bunn, Robin Thompson and the staff at KIPRC, Charles Landon, Charles P Gore, Jim McCarthy, Ann Marie Farina, Dr. Jeremy Faust and Dr. Ed Boyer, Justin Brower, Kathy Robinson, Zoe Renfro, John Bucknell, Chris Moraff, Jeremiah Laster, Tommy Kane, Jim McCarthy, Sarah Wakeman, and Al Tompkins. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate. CDC recommendations on helping people who overdose: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdf/patients/Preventing-an-Opioid-Overdose-Tip-Card-a.pdf Find out where to get naloxone: https://prevent-protect.org/

Duration: 1h 11m
Broadcast on: 24 May 2019
Audio Format: other

In this episode, we go to Bath County, Kentucky, where, as one health official put it, opioids have created “a hole the size of Kentucky.” We talk to the people on all sides of this story about stemming the tide of overdoses, we wrestle with the science of poison and fear, and we try to figure out when the drive to protect and help those around us should rise above the law.

This story was reported by Peter Andrey Smith with Matt Kielty, and produced by Matt Kielty.

Special thanks to Earl Willis, Bobby Ratliff, Ronnie Goldie, Megan Fisher, Alan Caudill, Nick Jones, Dan Wermerling, Terry Bunn, Robin Thompson and the staff at KIPRC, Charles Landon, Charles P Gore, Jim McCarthy, Ann Marie Farina, Dr. Jeremy Faust and Dr. Ed Boyer, Justin Brower, Kathy Robinson, Zoe Renfro, John Bucknell, Chris Moraff, Jeremiah Laster, Tommy Kane, Jim McCarthy, Sarah Wakeman, and Al Tompkins.

Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

CDC recommendations on helping people who overdose: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdf/patients/Preventing-an-Opioid-Overdose-Tip-Card-a.pdf

Find out where to get naloxone: https://prevent-protect.org/

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before we start the following story uh contains a moment or two that's uh pretty intense and may not be suitable for young kids so you wait you're listening to radio lab lab from wnyc yeah so peter yeah matt yeah where do you want to launch into this uh yeah we're gonna start with this um call tuesday august 8 2017 this is a call from bath county eastern kentucky 1351 and 26 seconds it's a call from dispatch to the bath county ems station these are the people that are dispatched to medical emergencies let's start and remember it was like one or two o'clock in the afternoon something like that tones went off for a uh unresponsive mail all right so that's scottie white men yep other voices jfo or partners in the ems service in bath county kentucky anyway call comes in first one of the day scottie and j hop in their emilence and they rush over to the department complex uh they've been there before it's this sort of squad two-story building like a strip mall almost we'll get there jump out put the gloves on enter this small apartment and immediately when they come in off to the left is the living room law enforcement sire the chief of police was there talking to the two people that were alert in the house a woman and a guy who are sitting on a couch and then if you look immediately to the right it's just like the kitchen is there and that's where scottie and jc why don't he's back with his arms to his side a guy in his mid 50s completely unresponsive he was laying in water about three inches deep where i guess somebody in the house had taken the sprayer from the kitchen scene came had sprayed him down trying to revive the guy bring him back to life and it doesn't happen that way so the jane scottie entered the kitchen stand over this guy he hadn't started turn blue yet so i checked and make sure he was breathing and he was but barely he's taking these really low shallow breaths and then i pulled his eyelids back and checked his pupils their tiny pinpoints he was overdosed pretty indicative of opiates so that's okay so jay grabs his medic kit he goes into his bag and he pulls out this nasal spray it's a drug called naloxone it's also commonly referred to as narcan and it's a drug that's that's known as being this Lazarus drug yeah because it immediately throws an opiate overdose into reverse and like brings people back from the brink of death so jay crouches over this guy and he takes this nasal spray sticks it up one of the guy's nostrils sprays it takes it out wait to be does the same thing to the other nostril back awake within seconds the guy opened his eyes talk what's going on i grab a tail and start drying him off and then i pushed him up so i could sit him up got him up got him onto the stretcher loaded in a truck and we take off to St Clair hospital Scotty's up front he's driving the ambulance jay's in the bag with the patient everything was good with him everything was routine when all of a sudden Scotty hollered through the window he yelled at me i don't feel right i can remember a weird taste coming into my mouth and a real odd smell hitting my nose what are you teasing i can't describe it it was just it was like chewing on steel go ahead Scotty while he's driving he gets on the radio horror and it's the next county over saying hey i need help i've got a white feeling uh rain freeze temperature i need you to send me an ambulance only he's found exit ramp of the 137 i just have help me that's our place stand for made it to the bottom of the ramp that's trucking park jay jumped out of the back and ran up to the front went to the passenger side got Scotty he was already slumped over unresponsive it was that quick like he was out cold huh not waking up anything no no he's not responding at all so what's what's happening well this is like this is the thing that i don't know was so shocking to me is that when jay then checked out Scotty had pinpoint pupils snoring respirations he seemed to have the exact same symptoms as the patient in the back of the ambulance who had overdosed wait what the exact same symptoms yeah that's what it looked like to j well how can how does that even happen well so um so jay explained it to us like uh they he says if you wind back they had gone into this apartment to treat this guy who was on the kitchen floor that was wet and he said he believes that when they were helping him up Scotty had rubbed against his skin to skin contact with his forearm and jay said he believes that what likely happened in that moment is that whatever drug this guy had taken had now gotten on to Scotty's arm absorbed through his skin into his system and then like 15 minutes later had caused Scotty to pass out wow that's that's really strange yeah it seems like a really

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