It’s not a lie. People do die because of doctor (nurse, etc) mistakes. Regardless if it’s accidental, negligent or deliberate. The term “iatrogenic” itself doesn’t make any distinctions about blame or guilt.
Personally I have stopped medical people from doing something bad by asking them to double-check doses and numbers. I have had family friends stop nurses from administering the wrong thing to a diabetic child, that would have killed them if they had done so. These are hardly the only incidents.
Accidents happen all the time. Doses are given that are incorrect. Machines set up to give doses have the wrong decimal point set, or the instructions on how many doses per day are misread (bid appears like tid or qid). People are treated with drugs for a misdiagnosed illness. People are prescribed a lot of drugs with bad side effects that wind up killing them. Crestor for example.
Besides these enumbers are hospitals self-reporting. If anything the criticism of the numbers is that they are too conservative.
Actually, that is a truth, invented by me and posted here on Free Republic long, long ago. Background...a local doctor was pissing and moaning in an editorial about the need for stronger gun control, and pushing the idea that guns should be regulated as a "health issue". It turned out that on that same day, that same paper (the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.....now defunct in print) had an article about iatrogenic deaths. I looked up the numbers of gun accidental deaths vs. iatrogenic ("medical misadventure") deaths from the paper and posted them here. The meme was picked up and spread from FR to many, many places, sometimes modified, sometimes not, sometimes treated as a joke. But I was completely serious when I first posted it...I wanted to "stick it in the eye" of those doctors who want to either ban or regulate guns as a health issue.
"Look at the CDC death stats: there is not even a category for that.
Why would the CDC have such statistics?? But they certainly can be found....simply search "iatrogenic death statistics".
"This lie has proven extremely useful to trial lawyers coaxing their brain-dead juries to "send a message" with an obscene judgement.
Bullbleep.