Third leading cause of death: doctors

May 19, 2007 7:54 AM

Doctors: third leading cause of death.
posted by wallstreet1929 (28 comments total)

That's misleading, because if all doctors were eliminated, deaths would increase.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:57 AM on May 19, 2007

When will the US start a War on Doctors - since they kill more people then all the other wars combined?
posted by homodigitalis at 7:59 AM on May 19, 2007

You dug up an article from 7 years ago.
posted by smackfu at 8:00 AM on May 19, 2007

Medical Doctor: "Above all, do no harm."
Osteopath: "Above all, do nothing."
posted by hexatron at 8:03 AM on May 19, 2007 [3 favorites]

Old. Also, an osteopath selectively quotes a JAMA article to shoe up his indictment of the "traditional medical paradigm." In other news, water is wet.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:04 AM on May 19, 2007

Folks are working on some of the human factors problems, in Canada most notably at the university health network. Cool stuff.
posted by anthill at 8:04 AM on May 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Osteopaths, I don't know about. But certainly the JAMA article highlighted the need to support human performance in the medical sector.
posted by anthill at 8:05 AM on May 19, 2007

I like that the initials for an Osteopath are DO. They really need to an "H" to that somehow.
posted by srboisvert at 8:07 AM on May 19, 2007

@smackfu "You dug up an article from 7 years ago."

Pretty close! He actually Dugg up an article from 20 hours 29 min ago.
posted by dnthomps at 8:09 AM on May 19, 2007

As my dad used to like to say: "Quick nurse, get the hearse, I'm worse!"
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:11 AM on May 19, 2007

doctors are also, coincidentally, the 1st leading cause of financial difficulty which is the leading cause of heart disease which is the leading cause of death so DOCTORS ARE BOTH THE THIRD AND FIRST LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH!!!
posted by shmegegge at 8:22 AM on May 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

The article is by Joseph Mercola, an osteopath who runs this website and newsletter. He often seems to have some valid and interesting points, but he does push (and endorse, and sell) an assortment of products while he preaches his anti-medical establishment view.

I'm generally quite open to questioning medical practice and practitioners. Just sayin'.
posted by dilettante at 8:26 AM on May 19, 2007

Hehe. He said iatrogenic.
posted by goatdog at 8:27 AM on May 19, 2007

Say what you will about doctors, but at least they're not lawyers.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:29 AM on May 19, 2007

He actually Dugg up an article from 20 hours 29 min ago.

Digg: Resurrecting articles from the dawn of the Internet.
posted by smackfu at 8:30 AM on May 19, 2007

homodigitalis writes "When will the US start a War on Doctors"

It's useless, because demand for cures will never really end. Those damn sick people its all their fault ! ALL !
posted by elpapacito at 8:34 AM on May 19, 2007

So this article aside, it's probably time for our society to rethink the way we portray doctors. People who become orthopedic surgeons are not the fictional heroes of the 1950s who save lives and are bedrocks of the community, nor are they villians who conspire to keep out alternative medicines and maintain control over the industry. They are just people who were moderately good at school and worked hard to make a good amount of money and not spend a lot of time with their families.
posted by allen.spaulding at 8:39 AM on May 19, 2007

thanks for the link to the human factors stuff, anthill. makes the thread redeemable.

"106,000 — non-error, negative effects of drugs"... which are not the responsiblity of the doctors, but the drug companies, no? Ah, the Osteopathic Lobby... on preview, that monju_bosatsu said.
posted by rmm at 8:40 AM on May 19, 2007

God, where to start?

The guy who wrote the article is an idiot. But it's not because he's an osteopath. Don't confuse D.O.s with chiropractors, naturopaths, homeopaths, and god knows what else is out there. D.O.s started out similar to chiropractors, but then began to acquire actual medical skills. Today, they're indistinguishable from M.D.s, except that they still do a little spinal manipulation on the side. An osteopath *is* a medical doctor.

Medical error is an important topic. It's a very hot topic, has been for the last decade. Everyone is working on it. Hospitals are under a lot of pressure from their regulatory bodies to do stuff that is believed to reduce error. But it's difficult, and frequently nonintuitive. (Duh. If it were easy, we would have already done it.) For example, computerized order entry and record-keeping systems are touted as being able to reduce errors due to handwriting misinterpretation, but a recent study showed that a hospital that instituted computerized order entry actually had an *increase* in order-related error. WTF? Now what?!

But this article is ridiculous.

Examples:

1) "106,000 — non-error, negative effects of drugs" Hello? Not an error? Yes, drugs have side effects. If the doc doesn't think the benefits outweigh the side effects, he wouldn't use the drug.

2) The list that starts "3th (last) for low-birth-weight percentages". This whole list is just slicing and dicing *two* numbers: infant mortality and life expectancy. You can't do that. The results won't be statistically independent, and don't mean anything. And there's no evidence that medical error is the cause of the US's lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality, anyway. Canada's vital statistics are slightly better, but studies of error in US hospitals and Canadian hospitals show similar rates of error.

Many other examples of misleading, misinterpreted or cherry-picked statistics are present.

Medical error is an important and interesting topic. But this is a terrible article about it.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 8:45 AM on May 19, 2007 [2 favorites]

One point in all the "osteopath" stuff, and I wish I'd remembered this before I mentioned it in my comment: "osteopath" in the U.K. means something quite different from what it means in the U.S. In the U.K., they're something similar to chiropractors and quite a bit closer to the origins of the field. In the U.S., DOs and MDs are licensed by the same boards in many states and have become pretty well interchangeable as the osteopathic field has evolved, although osteopathic education may sometimes still emphasize holistic approaches and the original osteopathic manipulations.
posted by dilettante at 9:12 AM on May 19, 2007

Of course, the first leading cause of death is life.
posted by Skeptic at 9:20 AM on May 19, 2007

Link isn't working.
posted by miss lynnster at 9:38 AM on May 19, 2007

Death: The first leading cause of death.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 9:48 AM on May 19, 2007

This is my surprised face. (An oldie, but a goodie)

That's misleading, because if all doctors were eliminated, deaths would increase.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:57 AM on May 19 [+]
[!]

The toxic stew of arrogance, profligacy, butt-covering, money-grubbing and cowboyism that nourishes much of the US medical care system very well could be doing more harm than good. All of the dangerous procedures that are done without adequate evidence of benefit not only drain our pocketbooks but lead to unnecessary morbidity and mortality. For example, by-pass surgery and coronary angioplasty have been done by the millions in this country to treat coronary artery disease. Finally, a randomized trial is done and the result:

Authors: Hueb W. Lopes NH. Gersh BJ. Soares P. Machado LA. Jatene FB. Oliveira SA. Ramires JA.
Title: Five-year follow-up of the Medicine, Angioplasty, or Surgery Study (MASS II): a randomized controlled clinical trial of 3 therapeutic strategies for multivessel coronary artery disease.[see comment].
Source: Circulation. 115(9):1082-9, 2007 Mar 6.
Abstract:...No statistical differences were observed in overall mortality among the 3 groups. In addition, 9.4% of MT and 11.2% of PCI patients underwent repeat revascularization procedures compared with 3.9% of CABG patients (P=0.021)...

This perpetuating of expensive by useless or harmful treatment has happened repeatedly in heart disease (e.g., antiarrhythmics), cancer (e.g., bone marrow transplants for solid tumors), mental illness (e.g., antipsychotics for panic attacks), transplantation (e.g., no proof of lowered mortality or morbidity for any transplantation), and infectious disease (e.g., a litany of HIV/AIDS drugs early on were used and later found to be harmful when compared to placebo). So, unless we demand that new drugs, surgeries and technologies be thoroughly proven before they are widely applied, we can't count on the net effect of medical care to be positive.
posted by Mental Wimp at 9:58 AM on May 19, 2007

I read somewhere that doctors are the leading cause of doctoring but this was years ago and has likely since changed.
posted by The Straightener at 10:00 AM on May 19, 2007

In Bid for Better Care, Surgery With a Warranty

That is what a hospital group in central Pennsylvania is trying to learn in an experiment that some experts say is a radically new way to encourage hospitals and doctors to provide high-quality care that can avoid costly mistakes.

The group, Geisinger Health System, has overhauled its approach to surgery. And taking a cue from the makers of television sets, washing machines and consumer products, Geisinger essentially guarantees its workmanship, charging a flat fee that includes 90 days of follow-up treatment...
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:01 AM on May 19, 2007

That's misleading, because if all doctors were eliminated, deaths would increase.

Really? We'd start seeing more than one death per birth?
posted by sfenders at 10:05 AM on May 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

I went to read the article to make up for my exceedingly stupid comment, but the doctors couldn't save their web server.
posted by sfenders at 10:06 AM on May 19, 2007