Does Health Care Kill Too Many Patients?

Browsing the net I found this link: Death Rate Falls , describing how death rates fell in Israel when the physicians went on strike. This is also described on BMJ.com.

I then found this link showing the number of physicians un the USA to be 853,187: catalog.ama-assn.org...

This link then shows that the number of deaths in the US due to physicians is up to 225,000 or more: YourMedicalDetective

That is, on average, 3.8 accidental deaths per physician, per year!

[edit on 28/10/2009 by LightFantastic]

Another interesting fact for you. When ice cream sales are down there is less spousal abuse in the country. We should probably look at banning Dr's and ice cream as they clearly cause issues.

Also if you poll prisoners on death row you will find that the majority of them drank milk as a kid. We should probably look at getting rid of milk also as it clearly helps people grow into killers.

[edit on 27-10-2009 by whoshotJR]

Simple answer Hell yes.
Complex answer ---see the wisdom of NIH.
I call it (the blind leading the sick)

Originally posted by whoshotJR
Another interesting fact for you. When ice cream sales are down there is less spousal abuse in the country. We should probably look at banning Dr's and ice cream as they clearly cause issues.

Also if you poll prisoners on death row you will find that the majority of them drank milk as a kid. We should probably look at getting rid of milk also as it clearly helps people grow into killers.

[edit on 27-10-2009 by whoshotJR]

Very interesting.
Could you give some solid data or some links?

reply to post by LightFantastic


Well, what do you expect?

Physicians run practices. Hence, they are practicing on you.

Then there are the pharmacists, and nurses who can't read the notes of the Dr., giving medications that are wrong, or they make their own mistakes as well.

Eating an apple a day to keep the Dr. away, might very well be true.

reply to post by whoshotJR


whoshotJR hit the nail on the head.

Not that he proved your implied argument wrong, but the fact that just because two stats seem similar, doesn't mean they are connected much at all.

There could be another 100 factors we are missing...

Originally posted by whoshotJR
Another interesting fact for you. When ice cream sales are down there is less spousal abuse in the country. We should probably look at banning Dr's and ice cream as they clearly cause issues.

You are missing the point entirely. I was pointing out the number of accidental deaths caused by doctors.

If you researched a little before before plugging in your sarcasm keyboard you would learn that this effect has been noted on many other occasions in other countries and has been seriously studied, which was the reason I posted that the findings were also in the British Medical Journal. The BMJ aren't noted for their wild correlations.

The falls in deaths reported are also many SDs out, pointing to a strong statistical link.

Originally posted by LightFantastic
Browsing the net I found this link: Death Rate Falls , describing how death rates fell in Israel when the physicians went on strike. This is also described on BMJ.com.

I then found this link showing the number of physicians un the USA to be 853,187: catalog.ama-assn.org...

This link then shows that the number of deaths in the US due to physicians is up to 225,000 or more: YourMedicalDetective

That is, on average, 3.8 accidental deaths per physician, per year!

Next time you need medical attention, will you go to a doctor and chance it? Or just sit at home and thank yourself for not subjecting your body to the whims of an incompetent doctor?

Originally posted by seanryann
Next time you need medical attention, will you go to a doctor and chance it? Or just sit at home and thank yourself for not subjecting your body to the whims of an incompetent doctor?

Doctors seem to be the third biggest cause of unnatural death in the US. If something is "falling off" then the doctor might be worth the risk.

It would be interesting to find figures for the UK as prescriptions are a bit less controlled by Big Pharma over here.

On my last visit to the states I had to laugh at an advert for some drug where the "small print" voice-over at the end said "has been known to cause death". That had me rushing out to buy some!

It is a funny world where we ban ecstasy and cannabis but allow aspirin to be sold even though it is much more dangerous. Big Pharma don't sell street ecstasy though.



[edit on 28/10/2009 by LightFantastic]

reply to post by LightFantastic


Actually I didn't miss your point and all of my statistics are true its just that they probably shouldn't be linked together. In summer you get high amounts of ice cream sales because of the heat and generally you get more cases reported of spousal abuse.

Your advocating people shouldnt see doctors with your post essentially and that less people would die if they didnt go see them. That's a crock as you can look back in history and see massive deaths due to lack of health care.

One other problem is your study doesn't mention people who didn't have health care or waited until the last possible moment to see a dr and then died because of complications that could have been solved if they would have seen a dr on regular visits(i.e. unnatural deaths).

Taken from your article.
* The term iatrogenic is defined as "induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially to pertain to a complication of treatment." Furthermore, these estimates of death due to error are lower than those in a recent Institutes of Medicine report.

This also includes people having complications or infection after seeing the Dr for care and possibly is not the Dr's fault but the persons living conditions or treatment for themselves.

Your article is the main reason we need health reform in the country as it spells out that the US is ranked 12 out of 13 in the study they did yet we pay far more per person in healthcare. Why is that? Fraud from insurcane companies and the fact that our system gets to see a patient when they are in dire need of treatment and not just for preventive measures like normal checkups.

More from your link:
Adverse Drug Reactions 100,000 to 140,000

This is not always the dr's fault either. This number includes suicides with prescription pills.

Another problem with your data is if you read your links the data they are using to determine the decline of deaths is not numbers from a hospital but by talking to 1 funeral home about their 1999 year data. They site a Source ( read rumor) that the same thing may have happened in another area.

Your article is about promoting alternative medicines and just happens to be from a site that sells them.

Don't you think that they may have a vested interest in making the numbers show you should use their products rather then go to the dr's?

Originally posted by whoshotJR
reply to post by LightFantastic

 

Actually I didn't miss your point and all of my statistics are true its just that they probably shouldn't be linked together. In summer you get high amounts of ice cream sales because of the heat and generally you get more cases reported of spousal abuse.

Your advocating people shouldnt see doctors with your post essentially and that less people would die if they didnt go see them. That's a crock as you can look back in history and see massive deaths due to lack of health care.

One other problem is your study doesn't mention people who didn't have health care or waited until the last possible moment to see a dr and then died because of complications that could have been solved if they would have seen a dr on regular visits(i.e. unnatural deaths).

Taken from your article.
* The term iatrogenic is defined as "induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially to pertain to a complication of treatment." Furthermore, these estimates of death due to error are lower than those in a recent Institutes of Medicine report.

This also includes people having complications or infection after seeing the Dr for care and possibly is not the Dr's fault but the persons living conditions or treatment for themselves.

Your article is the main reason we need health reform in the country as it spells out that the US is ranked 12 out of 13 in the study they did yet we pay far more per person in healthcare. Why is that? Fraud from insurcane companies and the fact that our system gets to see a patient when they are in dire need of treatment and not just for preventive measures like normal checkups.

More from your link:
Adverse Drug Reactions 100,000 to 140,000

This is not always the dr's fault either. This number includes suicides with prescription pills.

Another problem with your data is if you read your links the data they are using to determine the decline of deaths is not numbers from a hospital but by talking to 1 funeral home about their 1999 year data. They site a Source ( read rumor) that the same thing may have happened in another area.

Your article is about promoting alternative medicines and just happens to be from a site that sells them.

Don't you think that they may have a vested interest in making the numbers show you should use their products rather then go to the dr's?

It is fine that you do not bother to provide data when I asked you previously. This post here is hog wash unless you can provide some data.
Medical care kills more folks than it should. PEROID.

What are you talking about?Are you looking for the data on the statistics of ice cream and abuse? Just ignore that and reply to the rest of my post. It's not the data that is important its an example of how things sometimes look like they correlate when they don't.

Your real reply is you can't argue with my points I made so you are trying to avoid the topic and change the subject. I replied posting to how even the examples provided lack any real merit and even the source itself is suspect because they are selling products to people that deal in Alternative medicine so of course they would have something to gain by people using doctors less.

The data used to try and show a decrease in deaths wasn't even shown with hard numbers it was taken on a conversation with one funeral home on how their sales were down from the previous year. The "other" source was just hearsay and not proven with any data either.

The examples that showed real data of numbers of deaths from doctors it seems you didn't even understand the definition of accidental deaths as it wasn't just by accidents from doctors.

It seems like how you replied that you are also the OP and using two accounts, I could be wrong but it's just weird how you are replying as if you are the OP.




[edit on 29-10-2009 by whoshotJR]

Originally posted by whoshotJR
reply to post by LightFantastic

 

Your advocating people shouldnt see doctors with your post essentially and that less people would die if they didnt go see them. That's a crock as you can look back in history and see massive deaths due to lack of health care.

Taken from your article.
* The term iatrogenic is defined as "induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially to pertain to a complication of treatment." Furthermore, these estimates of death due to error are lower than those in a recent Institutes of Medicine report.

This also includes people having complications or infection after seeing the Dr for care and possibly is not the Dr's fault but the persons living conditions or treatment for themselves.

Your article is about promoting alternative medicines and just happens to be from a site that sells them.

Don't you think that they may have a vested interest in making the numbers show you should use their products rather then go to the dr's?

Firstly, this is my only ATS account. Look at the rest of my posts and see if Donny posts on any of them. I am more than capable of arguing with anyone on my own thanks.

Secondly, I am not advocating the people shouldn't see doctors at all. I am not saying that Health Care does more harm than good. I am saying that the US health care system appears to 'accidently' kill too many people. If a doctor prescribes a drug that he knows may cause death then who is at fault?

Thirdly, I posted the link to the 'alternate medicine' site because I guessed that most members don't have BMJ or PubMed subscriptions. I read the link and it is a refactored version of others on respected sites.

I am not trying to prove anything to anyone. I was merely posting some information I found interesting. As I posted previously this correlation has been seen in similar circumstances worldwide, with confidences of many SD's.

Here is a link that you can see some of without a subscription, with figures taken from the US National Academy of Sciences's Institute of Medicine, Scientific American There is a later report with increased figures and the other correlations above on PubMed which I not longer have access to.

That said I do understand that you were trying to point out to be wary of correlations.

reply to post by whoshotJR


Look I am not looking to hassle anybody on this topic as is isn't etched in stone. I do believe that most DOCTORS are in it for the bucks and really don't give a crap about you unless your blond and twenty two.
A good read is ---"The Solid Gold Stethoscope."
It is very enlightening. I have seen more death to older folks by kemo /radiation and routine test than natural death. I have seen families fortunes peed away on treatments and tests that fail in the end and leave the families penny less.
Doctors are good with the mechanical parts that they can treat like auto repair but very poor with cancers and most complex organs.The reason people live a little longer is mostly due to technology. (Hot running water)
Hygiene.

[edit on 29-10-2009 by Donny 4 million]