Doctors Kill More People Than Guns Do

NewsMax.com ^ | 12/29/04 | Nathan Tabor

[kattracks]

Back before the November election, many mainstream media pundits – trying desperately to get John Kerry elected – began to harp on President Bush's unwillingness to stop certain federal gun control laws from expiring as scheduled. But their propaganda efforts came to naught because this issue was a non-starter with the American people.

The fact is, in this day of post-9/11 increased security consciousness, most average Americans simply don’t want more gun control. They want more guns on hand to defend themselves and their loved ones in the face of possible life-threatening danger. Soccer moms are now taking handgun proficiency courses down at the local firing range.

Liberals are always complaining about getting to the root of the problem – unless it deals with gun rights. Then they abandon all logical analysis and resort to hysteria, distortion and downright lies.

Today I want to set the record straight and dispel a few of the more common myths with some hard facts.

First, according to statistics provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there is an interesting correlation between accidental deaths caused by guns and those caused by doctors.

Doctors: (A) There are 700,000 physicians in the U.S. (B) Accidental deaths caused by physicians total 120,000 per year. (C) Accidental death percentage per physician is 0.171.

Guns: (A) There are 80 million gun owners in the U.S. (B) There are 1,500 accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups. (C) The percentage of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.0000188.

Statistically, then, doctors are 9,000 times more dangerous to the public health than gun owners are.

Fact: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR. Following the logic of liberals, we should all be warned: "Guns don't kill people. Doctors do."

More seriously, Dr. Glen Otero of the Claremont Institute has published an enlightening article entitled "Ten Myths About Gun Control." (The entire article can be found at the Web site of Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, www.dsl.org.) Here are just a few of his well-documented findings.

• Approximately 80 percent of all adult American citizens own firearms, and a gun can be found in nearly half of American households.

• Between 1974 and 1995, the total number of privately owned firearms in America increased by 75 percent, to 236 million. During the same period, national homicide and robbery rates did NOT significantly increase.

• Fewer than 1 percent of all guns are involved in any type of crime, which means that over 99 percent of all guns are NOT used to commit any crime.

• In 1987, the National Crime Victimization Survey estimated that about 83 percent of Americans would become the victims of violent crime during the course of their lifetimes.

• The National Self-Defense Survey found that between 1988 and 1993, American civilians used firearms in self-defense almost 2.5 million times per year, saving up to 400,000 lives per year in the process.

• Guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens deter crime. Where U.S. counties have enacted concealed-carry laws, murder rates fell by 8 percent, rape by 5 percent, and aggravated assault by 7 percent. Urban counties recorded the largest decreases demographically.

You get the picture: Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. But sometimes law-abiding citizens with guns can save the lives of other innocent people.

It’s time to restore some common sense to the hysterical debate over gun control. When Cain killed Abel with a rock, God didn’t ban all rocks. He dealt with Cain personally. We need to enforce our criminal laws against murder, robbery and assault.

I will cite the testimony of just one more expert witness. No, it’s not another politician or media pundit. Here’s what former Mafia underboss, self-confessed hit man and government informant Sammy "The Bull" Gravano had to say:

"Gun control? It’s the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I’m a bad guy, I’m always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You pull the trigger with a lock on, and I’ll pull the trigger. We’ll see who wins."

It’s time for liberals to go out and buy a gun. And maybe get a life – or at least protect one.

Copyright © 2004 by Nathan Tabor

[TomB]

Oh boy, we get to revist the old "doctors kill more people than....." meme yet again.

First of all, consider that the VAST majority of people who are checked into a hospital are sick (duh). The severity of the sickness obviously determines the prognosis (again, duh). There are many instances where certain treatments, or lack thereof, can hasten the death of someone who was already terminal. If that means a person dies 3 months sooner than expected, the study used to derive this number counts that as a "physician caused death".

The study itself, conducted by the Institute of Medicine has been shown to be highly questionable.

How Many Deaths Are Due to Medical Error? Getting the Number Right

Deaths Due to Medical Errors Are Exaggerated in Institute of Medicine Report

Deaths From Medical Errors May Have Been Overstated

Special Article: How Many Medical Error Deaths Are There Really?

[LibertarianInExile]

BAN DOCTORS!

We should AT LEAST require a five-day waiting period before people could see a doctor.

[LibertarianInExile]

Great minds think alike...ping to 42. :)

[Beenliedto]

As a practicing physician for 25 years, I truly look forward to retirement. Our society's prevailing victim mentality that physicians are responsible for any bad medical outcome has led me to the point where I actually actively discourage any young person who wishes to practice medicine, including my own children. For those of you who subscribe to the "hate the privileged doctor class warfare mentality", I have this advice: Go Treat Yourselves.

I really think that you have missed the point here.

The poster was mearly trying to point out that sometime we direct our concerns about emotional issues to the wrong places.

Why focus our energy on guns, as opposed to many other far more prevalent causes of death... unless of course there's a political motivation behind it...

which, of course, there is.

No need to go defensive. No one's after you.

[TomB]

No need to go defensive. No one's after you.

By repeating the oft-debunked numbers the author uses for physicians, he is doing a great disservice to the profession, despite his higher intentions.

If you look around the internet, those numbers have taken on a life of their own amongst lawyers, alternative medicine websites, chiropractors, etc. And mindlessly repeating them helps noone.

[PeoplesRepublicOfWashington]

Liberals are always complaining about getting to the root of the problem – unless it deals with gun rights. Then they abandon all logical analysis and resort to hysteria, distortion and downright lies.

Name, please, one issue where the liberals do NOT abandon all logical analysis and do NOT resort to hysteria, etc.

[Nataku X]

I've told this story on FR before... I'll tell it again... when I was 2 years old, my mother felt something was seriously wrong with me. She went to a doctor, who said I had the flu and sent me home. She went to the ER, who said & did the same. As this was on a naval base, my father dressed up in full officer uniform and marched to the ER with me and demanded they admit me. They finally did so--and took a spinal tap... the fluid was so cloudy, they didn't even wait for the results, they pumped me full of antibiotics and told my parents they'd know by morning whether I'd live or not... and if they'd waited one more night, I would've died.

So it was a misdiagnosis, but I don't blame the doctors, I blame people like my friend who ran to the ER for cutting her finger on an opened can lid and screamed until she saw a doctor and got a shot. Those cases make doctors quite cynical and deaf to a mother's true instinct.

[Texas Songwriter]

Hello Doc. I've practiced general surgery since 1979. Just recently retired. You get it. The folks need to consider that everytime we take an imflammed appendix out or a gall bladder, we have saved that persons life as compared to the preantibiotic era. Before antibiotics and vaccines people died of disease no one dies of today, or very few. As for retirement, I recommmend you get there as fast as possible. It is wonderful.

[Bushforlife]

Really? No need to be defensive? Gosh, what a relief. I thought the big headline on the post was "Doctors Kill More People Than Guns Do". I guess I'm wrong to resent seeing my profession maligned yet again.

And no one is after me? Gosh, that explains the 5 lawsuits I've had in my years of practice, every one of which was unfounded, and every one of which was a judgment for the defense [me]. Yes, I won, at the cost of years of worry, loss of sleep, time away from work, and nice newspaper headlines such as "Local Doctor Charged with Negligence" prior to the defense verdict, which was buried on page 8.

The current figures are that the Emergency Physicians are sued once every 10.5 thousand patients. I currently see 9.1 thousand patients a year. No, I shouldn't be defensive. No one is after me. Not even the posts about the wrong leg amputations, and the walk-out clinic. Darn it, I'm being oversensitive again.

[Bushforlife]

Nice story, but not a misdiagnosis. Some illnesses are very hard to diagnose, including meningitis. Good studies show that bacterial meningitis in its' early stages is ABSOLUTELY INDISTINGUISHABLE clinically from a viral syndrome. So unless we as a society are prepared to spinal tap every child that presents to the doctor with a fever, the diagnosis of meningitis will continue to be difficult, and some patients will be sent home. That is the fault of the way the disease presents, the lack of sensitivity of the current tests, but NOT the doctor. I always tell the parents of a feverish child that they need to return immediately if worse, and if not better in 2 days, because of just this situation.

You have doctors and fortune tellers mixed up. We can't predict the future.

If I told you that your 2 year old child with a fever of 101 needed a spinal tap, and he has absolutely no sign of meningitis on labs or physical exam, you would want to know why. If the reason is that there is a 1 in 100,000 chance that he could have early meningitis, but a 99,000 out of a 100,000 chance that it is just a virus, you would no doubt refuse. Yet he could have it. And if I routinely press parents to allow this, the complaints would drive me out of business ["this doctor has absolutely no indication that my child has meningitis, but he subjected her to a spinal tap!"]. So no doctor can practice like that. So we tell parents the odds, and send them home. And therefore the 1 in 100,000 who really HAS meningitis is NOT a misdiagnosis; it is a delayed presentation of disease.

[Nataku X]

Interesting. It was indeed bacterical meningitis. Thank you very much, I didn't know all that.

[airborne]

And one doctor can kill over and over and over and over. Just pay his malpractice insurance, and the AMA will let him practice.

[Beenliedto]

People are normally rewarded in large measure by the amount of risk they are prepared to take.

I've been in business for myself for somewhat longer than the time you've been practicing medicine. I have done well, but always by taking risks in the marketplace. Risks, I might add, that have never been covered by insurance.

So what was your net taxable income last year?

[SideoutFred]

I don't envy your position. You are right on. You guys save lives daily that in the "old days" folks wouldn't have made it. I guess we all expect miracles now. Hell, heart bypass surgery by a coworker is now a "routine deal." Mind blowing really.

I wish you well with retirement when it comes. Hang in there!

:)

[Bushforlife]

So your position is that the injustice should be tolerated and excused if one has a high income? Interesting thought process.

Having liability insurance is a requirement for physician licensure, not a choice. The state [managed by lawyers] mandates that a physician carry such insurance, so that other attorneys can have access to that deep pocket via lawsuits. The cost of the liability insurance differs by specialty; currently in my specialty it is in excess of $100K. This premium comes out of the physicians' pocket. That cost is passed on to the consumer. But I guess that's ok with you, since one must take "risks in the marketplace".

Your analogy between business marketplace risk and medical malpractice liability does not hold water. You have the ability to choose your risk; taking a risk by investment is indeed one of the essential components of a capitalist system. You can choose the AMOUNT of risk to take. You can choose WHEN to take it. You can choose to diversify your endeavors so as to minimize your exposure to risk.

On the other hand, I do not choose to take risk. I am merely trying to practice medicine, whereas malpractice profiteers choose to profit from the fact that medicine is an art rather than an exact science, and from the fact that at the beginning of the medical encounter one does not know the final answer one is trying to deduce, whereas the medical malpractice profiteer knows what the final outcome turned out to be, and seeks to demonstrate how easy this answer could have been arrived at had the physician only taken THESE SIMPLE STEPS, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
And once these laypeople of the jury [NOT a jury of my peers, by the way] are subjected to the theatre of the courtroom and convinced that this poor unfortunate outcome could have been avoided ONLY if that doctor had taken these simple steps [arrived at, once again, after the final outcome is well known], or that this poor unfortunate soul needs the insurance money even if the Doctor actually didn't do anything wrong, then the doctor's reputation is besmirched, and he is declared to have been the CAUSE of this persons injury or death. So, Mr. Beenliedto [apt name], what amount of income justifies THAT?

Again, your underlying premise that I should tolerate and excuse medical malpractice profiteering for the sake of a comfortable income is intolerable for anyone of principle. I refuse to be a willing cash cow to be milked by malpractice attorneys at will, and I refuse that role for ANY amount of money.

And by the way, there is one wager, or RISK, that I WOULD be willing to take. Although you have "been in business for myself for somewhat longer than the time you've been practicing medicine", I have no doubt at all that my hourly income is less than yours. And how many 12 hour overnight business shifts have you done? How many Thanksgivings, Easters, and Christmases have you spent on the job? How many unattractive business deals have you chosen to turn down, as opposed to myself who must see anyone who shows up at the door, no matter the ability to pay, no matter how unpleasant the problem. Thirty five per cent of my patients never pay me ANYTHING for their care. In fact, I lose money because of the resources I must expend on them [a non-taxable loss, since no income is thereby produced].How many business deals do you sign onto knowing in advance that they will cost you money, rather than turn a profit?

Good luck on your future analogies.

[John Will]

Probally the Reason why I am choosing chemistry.

[fire_eye]

We had an incident in the People's Republic of Eugene a couple of years back, where some doctors group paid for anti-gun advertising to be placed on the back of the local People's Transportation (buses).

There was a retired firebrand down there who was busy making the City Council miserable about it, with considerable encouragement from the rest of us benighted redneck rabble. At the time, he was planning on trying to force the Council to allow him to purchase advertising space on the buses, *pointing out that more people are killed by doctors than by guns*, just as the article states.

I don't know if he succeeded, but if he did, the doctors would have gotten exactly what they deserved.

[Defendingliberty]

"More people die in the Cleveland Clinic than the walk-in clinic"
"The ones in the Cleveland Clinic are sicker."

You assume I don't know that. My statement is true, you can't argue with the facts. I have been learning to think like a progressive (AKA liberal) Say something that is true on the face, yet stupid and unrelated to truth. The real truth is people at death's door will do anything to get to the Cleveland Clinic (because of the great treatment) and people with head colds frequent walk-in clinics.

[B4Ranch]

I snipped these from the full chart.

.awmAnchor {position:relative}

Leading Causes of Death in the United States As compiled from data reported by the National Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 50, No. 15, September 16, 2002

Home Page

Leading Causes of Death in the United States

Note: In the yellow row, "Total Number of Deaths," the percentages answer the question, "Of the total number of deaths
for all ages in the United States, what percent was attributed to each age group."

In the white rows, percentages answer the question, "Of the total number of deaths for all ages in each 'Cause of Death,
' what percentage was attributed to each age group."

Cause of Death/Age Range	All Ages		Under 1 Yr		1-4 yrs		5-14yrs		15-24 yrs		25-34		35-44
Total Number of Deaths	2,403,351	100%	28,035	1.2%	4,979	0.2%	7,413	0.3%	3,1307	1.3%	40,451	1.7%	89,798	3.7%
Motor Vehicle Accidents	43,354	1.8%	168	0.6%	651	13.1%	1,772	23.9%	10,560	33.7%	6,884	17.0%	6,927	7.7%
Firearms	28,663	1.2%	13	0.0%	46	0.9%	377	5.1%	6,575	21.0%	5,789	14.3%	,5358	6.0%
NOTE: Firearms Statistics Include Gang Warfare, Self Defense Shootings and Criminals Killed by Police

Cause of Death/Age Range	45-54		55-64		65-74		75-84		85 and over		Not stated
Total Number of Deaths	160,341	6.7%	240,846	10.0%	441,209	18.4%	700,445	29.1%	658,171	27.4%	356	0.0%
Motor Vehicle Accidents	5,361	3.3%	3,506	1.5%	3,038	0.7%	3,173	0.5%	1,288	0.2%	26	7.3%
Firearms	3,951	2.5%	2,272	0.9%	1,941	0.4%	1,723	0.2%	600	0.1%	18	5.1%

Leading Causes of Accidental Death in the United States

Note: In the yellow row, "Total Number of Deaths," the percentages answer the question, "Of the total number of deaths
for all ages in the United States, what percent was attributed to each age group."

In the white rows, percentages answer the question, "Of the total number of deaths for all ages in each 'Cause of Death,
' what percentage was attributed to each age group."

Cause of Death/Age Range	All Ages		Under 1 Yr		1-4 yrs		5-14yrs		15-24 yrs		25-34		35-44
Total Number of Deaths	97,900	100%	881	0.9%	1,826	1.9%	2,979	3.0%	14,113	14.4%	11,769	12.0%	15,413	15.7%
Motor Vehicle	43,354	44.3%	168	19.1%	651	35.7%	1,772	59.5%	10,560	74.8%	6,884	58.5%	6,927	44.9%
Unspecified nontransport accid'ts	17,437	17.8%	572	64.9%	266	14.6%	267	9.0%	648	4.6%	895	7.6%	1446	9.4%
Falls	13,322	13.6%	8	0.9%	36	2.0%	37	1.2%	237	1.7%	303	2.6%	608	3.9%
Poisoning and Noxious Subst's	12,757	13.0%	14	1.6%	32	1.8%	45	1.5%	1,160	8.2%	2,380	20.2%	4,663	30.3%
Drowning	3,842	3.9%	75	8.5%	493	27.0%	375	12.6%	646	4.6%	419	3.6%	480	3.1%
Exposure to Smoke, Fire, Flames	3,377	3.4%	37	4.2%	290	15.9%	266	8.9%	192	1.4%	241	2.0%	402	2.6%
Other Land Transport Accidents	1,492	1.5%	2	0.2%	31	1.7%	98	3.3%	243	1.7%	212	1.8%	317	2.1%
Complications of Med/Surg Care	3,059	3.1%	19	2.2%	22	1.2%	31	1.0%	32	0.2%	85	0.7%	149	1.0%
Accidental Discharge of Firearms	776	0.8%	1	0.1%	18	1.0%	67	2.2%	202	1.4%	131	1.1%	153	1.0%

Cause of Death/Age Range	45-54		55-64		65-74		75-84		85 and over		Not stated
Total Number of Deaths	12,278	12.5%	7,505	7.7%	7,698	7.9%	11,758	12.0%	11,595	0.5%	85	0.1%
Motor Vehicle	5,361	43.7%	3,506	46.7%	3,038	39.5%	3,173	27.0%	1,288	11.1%	26	30.6%
Unspecified accidents	1,510	12.3%	1,349	18.0%	1,824	23.7%	3,678	31.3%	4,966	42.8%	16	18.8%
Falls	871	7.1%	949	12.6%	1,660	21.6%	3,841	32.7%	4,772	41.2%	0	0.0%
Poisoning and Noxious Subst's	3,061	24.9%	688	9.2%	278	3.6%	245	2.1%	184	1.6%	7	8.2%
Drowning	354	2.9%	217	2.9%	179	2.3%	156	1.3%	64	0.6%	24	28.2%
Exposure to Smoke, Fire, Flames	439	3.6%	369	4.9%	401	5.2%	472	4.0%	263	2.3%	5	5.9%
Other Land Transport Accidents	234	1.9%	122	1.6%	100	1.3%	91	0.8%	35	0.3%	7	8.2%
Complications of Med/Surg Care	295	2.4%	376	5.0%	647	8.4%	825	7.0%	578	5.0%	0	0.0%
Accidental Discharge of Firearms	78	0.6%	50	0.7%	41	0.5%	24	0.2%	11	0.1%	0	0.0%