Doctors Kill More People Than Guns? No, a study
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Posted On: 09/24/2018 11:53:03 PM
Doctors Kill More People Than Guns?
No, a study didn't prove doctors are more deadly than guns.
Seriously Poem, and the rest of you critical thinking skills impaired righties, WTF is wrong with you?
Oh wait, my bad, I answered my own question within the question.
Some of you will dismiss the evidence because, Snopes.
Most of you will dismiss it because it's way above the reading comprehension level you attained before you flunked out of a bad HS or a college that found you out before your sophomore year was completed. So not EVEN 'sophomoric' levels of comprehension.
Then you just gave up, and you've been overcompensating ever since, which a whole other post.
Also because your cognitive dissonance resulting from the collision of your benighted beliefs with facts and evidence is, well, painful; do
as Sargent Barnes yelled at the wounded trooper in "Platoon" and......'TAKE THE PAIN!!!'.
Then, Poem, you in particular will find the 'cleansing' you are forever haranguing the rest of us about.
I'd say enjoy, but I'd also say that enjoyment is dependent upon understanding. So, as you were!
https://us-east-1.tchyn.io/snopes-production/...=640%2C360
CLAIM
A study proved you're thousands of times more likely to be killed by a doctor than a gun in the United States. See Example( s )
EXAMPLES
Collected via e-mail, Internet, and Twitter, January 2016
Aren't statistics wonderful? 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.' Doctors: (A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000. (
Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000. (C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171 Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. --
Now think about this: Guns: (A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. (Yes, that's 80 million)
( The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500. (C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .0000188 Statistics courtesy of FBI
So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners. Remember, 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.' FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT Almost everyone has at least one doctor.
This means you are over 9,000 times more likely to be killed by a doctor as by a gun owner!!! Please alert your friends to this alarming threat.
We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!! Out of concern for the public at large, we withheld the statistics on lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention!
RATING
One of the two other citations was from a supplement sales company’s March 2004 article “Death by Doctor,” which purportedly supported the figure of doctor-caused deaths. An excerpt from that article read more like a vitamin sales pamphlet than a study or other credible research:
Natural medicine is under siege, as pharmaceutical company lobbyists urge lawmakers to deprive Americans of the benefits of dietary supplements. Drug-company front groups have launched slanderous media campaigns to discredit the value of healthy lifestyles. The FDA continues to interfere with those who offer natural products that compete with prescription drugs.
These attacks against natural medicine obscure a lethal problem that until now was buried in thousands of pages of scientific text. In response to these baseless challenges to natural medicine, the Nutrition Institute of America commissioned an independent review of the quality of “government-approved” medicine.
The startling findings from this meticulous study indicate that conventional medicine is “the leading cause of death” in the United States .
What you are about to read is a stunning compilation of facts that documents that those who seek to abolish consumer access to natural therapies are misleading the public.
Over 700,000 Americans die each year at the hands of government-sanctioned medicine, while the FDA and other government agencies pretend to protect the public by harassing those who offer safe alternatives.
Neither Natural News nor the vitamin sales company detailed the means by which they concluded that 700,000 Americans died each year due to medical accidents (Natural News‘ infographic cited only themselves and the LifeExtension nutritional supplement company as sources), and on 1 February 2013, the Inquisitr published an article in which the dodgy Natural News infographic was incredibly described as a “study”:
US Department of Health and Human Services statistics were used to compile a Natural News infographic about doctor related deaths versus gun crime figures. There are currently 700,000 doctors in the United States. According to the study, there are 120,000 accidental deaths caused by doctors each year.
The infographic of accidental doctor deaths notes that medial errors accounted for 98,000 deaths.
We were unable to locate any matching study, nor any statistics compiled by the HHS at any point in time pertaining to “doctor-related deaths” (as it didn’t appear that agency maintained such records). In September 2013, NPR published a piece that cited some more tangible data on medical mistakes:
In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published the famous “To Err Is Human” report, which dropped a bombshell on the medical community by reporting that up to 98,000 people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals.
The number was initially disputed, but is now widely accepted by doctors and hospital officials — and quoted ubiquitously in the media.
Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death.
Both previously excerpted claims antedated the NPR piece and its source study by several months, so the 2013 Journal of Patient Safety article cited by NPR couldn’t have been the source for the 700,000 figure. (The Journal of Patient Safety figures, while high, topped out at 440,000).
Even then, as NPR noted, the estimates were perpetually in dispute, partially due to the fact that such figures are next to near impossible to quantify:
Asked about the higher estimates, a spokesman for the American Hospital Association said the group has more confidence in the IOM’s (Institute of Medicine’s) estimate of 98,000 deaths. ProPublica asked three prominent patient safety researchers to review James’ study, however, and all said his methods and findings were credible.
What’s the right number?
Nobody knows for sure. There’s never been an actual count of how many patients experience preventable harm. So we’re left with approximations, which are imperfect in part because of inaccuracies in medical records and the reluctance of some providers to report mistakes.
In short, there’s absolutely nothing close to a solid figure on deaths by medical error per year. At best, experts have settled on a range of 98,000 to 440,000, but no one knows whether those numbers are grossly exaggerated or horribly underestimated.
Natural News cited GunPolicy.org’s 2011 statistics,
but the infographics numbers demonstrated significant variance from what we found when we viewed the same statistics in January 2016 (possibly due to adjusted data).
The infographic claimed total gun deaths as 31,940 from homicide (11,101), suicide (19,766), unintentional shooting (851), and undetermined intent (222). In January 2016, the 2011 stats displayed as 32,351 total, from homicide (11,068), suicide (19,990), unintentional shooting (591), and undetermined intent (248).
The larger total included additional gun deaths not attributed to any of those four causes, whereas the smaller initial number did not.
The CDC’s data tool returned the updated number of 591 accidental gun deaths in the U.S. in 2011, matching the statistics we located on GunPolicy.org.
That same tool enabled us to pull a solid number of deaths by adverse event for that same year (2011), either by prescribed drugs or medical care. That number was actually 2,584, which was not only far lower than the numbers estimated in contemporaneous research, but also than the unsourced count of 700,000 which appeared in the original joke e-mail forward before it transmuted to become a “study.”
Finally, whatever the real numbers might be, trying to draw meaningful conclusions based on the number of accidental deaths per doctor or per gun is a very, very poor metric, because those measurements don’t take frequency into account (i.e., how often one is in a position to be killed by a doctor or a gun in the first place).
When we want to analyze statistics regarding fatal traffic accidents, for example, we typically don’t look at the number of deaths per automobile, because some automobiles are on the road much more than others; instead, we look at the number of deaths per mile driven.
So to make a valid comparison between doctors and guns, we would need to know the number of times the average person is typically treated by a doctor per year, as well as the number of times the average person is within range of a gun that could be accidentally discharged, and take those factors into account.
In any case, the e-mail forward reproduced above was never intended to be taken seriously as a legitimate comparison of deaths caused by doctors versus deaths caused by guns.
The sheer number of variables makes such a comparison completely meaningless though any imaginable manipulation of the underlying statistics, and the root claim that 700,000 Americans die each year due to medical mistakes appears to be cut from whole cloth. As such, this once-humorous meme remains false.
No, a study didn't prove doctors are more deadly than guns.
Seriously Poem, and the rest of you critical thinking skills impaired righties, WTF is wrong with you?
Oh wait, my bad, I answered my own question within the question.
Some of you will dismiss the evidence because, Snopes.
Most of you will dismiss it because it's way above the reading comprehension level you attained before you flunked out of a bad HS or a college that found you out before your sophomore year was completed. So not EVEN 'sophomoric' levels of comprehension.
Then you just gave up, and you've been overcompensating ever since, which a whole other post.
Also because your cognitive dissonance resulting from the collision of your benighted beliefs with facts and evidence is, well, painful; do
as Sargent Barnes yelled at the wounded trooper in "Platoon" and......'TAKE THE PAIN!!!'.
Then, Poem, you in particular will find the 'cleansing' you are forever haranguing the rest of us about.
I'd say enjoy, but I'd also say that enjoyment is dependent upon understanding. So, as you were!
https://us-east-1.tchyn.io/snopes-production/...=640%2C360
CLAIM
A study proved you're thousands of times more likely to be killed by a doctor than a gun in the United States. See Example( s )
EXAMPLES
Collected via e-mail, Internet, and Twitter, January 2016
Aren't statistics wonderful? 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.' Doctors: (A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000. (
Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000. (C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171 Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. -- Now think about this: Guns: (A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. (Yes, that's 80 million)
(
The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500. (C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .0000188 Statistics courtesy of FBI
So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners. Remember, 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.' FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT Almost everyone has at least one doctor.
This means you are over 9,000 times more likely to be killed by a doctor as by a gun owner!!! Please alert your friends to this alarming threat.
We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!! Out of concern for the public at large, we withheld the statistics on lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention!
RATING
One of the two other citations was from a supplement sales company’s March 2004 article “Death by Doctor,” which purportedly supported the figure of doctor-caused deaths. An excerpt from that article read more like a vitamin sales pamphlet than a study or other credible research:
Natural medicine is under siege, as pharmaceutical company lobbyists urge lawmakers to deprive Americans of the benefits of dietary supplements. Drug-company front groups have launched slanderous media campaigns to discredit the value of healthy lifestyles. The FDA continues to interfere with those who offer natural products that compete with prescription drugs.
These attacks against natural medicine obscure a lethal problem that until now was buried in thousands of pages of scientific text. In response to these baseless challenges to natural medicine, the Nutrition Institute of America commissioned an independent review of the quality of “government-approved” medicine.
The startling findings from this meticulous study indicate that conventional medicine is “the leading cause of death” in the United States .
What you are about to read is a stunning compilation of facts that documents that those who seek to abolish consumer access to natural therapies are misleading the public.
Over 700,000 Americans die each year at the hands of government-sanctioned medicine, while the FDA and other government agencies pretend to protect the public by harassing those who offer safe alternatives.
Neither Natural News nor the vitamin sales company detailed the means by which they concluded that 700,000 Americans died each year due to medical accidents (Natural News‘ infographic cited only themselves and the LifeExtension nutritional supplement company as sources), and on 1 February 2013, the Inquisitr published an article in which the dodgy Natural News infographic was incredibly described as a “study”:
US Department of Health and Human Services statistics were used to compile a Natural News infographic about doctor related deaths versus gun crime figures. There are currently 700,000 doctors in the United States. According to the study, there are 120,000 accidental deaths caused by doctors each year.
The infographic of accidental doctor deaths notes that medial errors accounted for 98,000 deaths.
We were unable to locate any matching study, nor any statistics compiled by the HHS at any point in time pertaining to “doctor-related deaths” (as it didn’t appear that agency maintained such records). In September 2013, NPR published a piece that cited some more tangible data on medical mistakes:
In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published the famous “To Err Is Human” report, which dropped a bombshell on the medical community by reporting that up to 98,000 people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals.
The number was initially disputed, but is now widely accepted by doctors and hospital officials — and quoted ubiquitously in the media.
Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death.
Both previously excerpted claims antedated the NPR piece and its source study by several months, so the 2013 Journal of Patient Safety article cited by NPR couldn’t have been the source for the 700,000 figure. (The Journal of Patient Safety figures, while high, topped out at 440,000).
Even then, as NPR noted, the estimates were perpetually in dispute, partially due to the fact that such figures are next to near impossible to quantify:
Asked about the higher estimates, a spokesman for the American Hospital Association said the group has more confidence in the IOM’s (Institute of Medicine’s) estimate of 98,000 deaths. ProPublica asked three prominent patient safety researchers to review James’ study, however, and all said his methods and findings were credible.
What’s the right number?
Nobody knows for sure. There’s never been an actual count of how many patients experience preventable harm. So we’re left with approximations, which are imperfect in part because of inaccuracies in medical records and the reluctance of some providers to report mistakes.
In short, there’s absolutely nothing close to a solid figure on deaths by medical error per year. At best, experts have settled on a range of 98,000 to 440,000, but no one knows whether those numbers are grossly exaggerated or horribly underestimated.
Natural News cited GunPolicy.org’s 2011 statistics,
but the infographics numbers demonstrated significant variance from what we found when we viewed the same statistics in January 2016 (possibly due to adjusted data).
The infographic claimed total gun deaths as 31,940 from homicide (11,101), suicide (19,766), unintentional shooting (851), and undetermined intent (222). In January 2016, the 2011 stats displayed as 32,351 total, from homicide (11,068), suicide (19,990), unintentional shooting (591), and undetermined intent (248).
The larger total included additional gun deaths not attributed to any of those four causes, whereas the smaller initial number did not.
The CDC’s data tool returned the updated number of 591 accidental gun deaths in the U.S. in 2011, matching the statistics we located on GunPolicy.org.
That same tool enabled us to pull a solid number of deaths by adverse event for that same year (2011), either by prescribed drugs or medical care. That number was actually 2,584, which was not only far lower than the numbers estimated in contemporaneous research, but also than the unsourced count of 700,000 which appeared in the original joke e-mail forward before it transmuted to become a “study.”
Finally, whatever the real numbers might be, trying to draw meaningful conclusions based on the number of accidental deaths per doctor or per gun is a very, very poor metric, because those measurements don’t take frequency into account (i.e., how often one is in a position to be killed by a doctor or a gun in the first place).
When we want to analyze statistics regarding fatal traffic accidents, for example, we typically don’t look at the number of deaths per automobile, because some automobiles are on the road much more than others; instead, we look at the number of deaths per mile driven.
So to make a valid comparison between doctors and guns, we would need to know the number of times the average person is typically treated by a doctor per year, as well as the number of times the average person is within range of a gun that could be accidentally discharged, and take those factors into account.
In any case, the e-mail forward reproduced above was never intended to be taken seriously as a legitimate comparison of deaths caused by doctors versus deaths caused by guns.
The sheer number of variables makes such a comparison completely meaningless though any imaginable manipulation of the underlying statistics, and the root claim that 700,000 Americans die each year due to medical mistakes appears to be cut from whole cloth. As such, this once-humorous meme remains false.
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