The Enemy Is Us

This is from the AMERICAN MEDICAL NEWS letter section:

Instead of attacking liability system, focus on error prevention

Regarding "Survey links burnout, surgical errors," (Briefs, Dec. 7, 2009): According to a national survey commissioned by the American College of Surgeons, 9% of the 7,905 physicians surveyed stated concern that they, in the words of the AMNewsarticle, "had made a serious error in the previous three months."

Given the large number of various surgical specialists in the U.S., and the critical nature of many of the operative procedures they perform, does it not logically follow that there will be thousands of quite legitimate medical malpractice lawsuits filed as a result of the morbidity and mortality that occurs as a direct result of those errors?

Instead of expending so much time, effort, and money in constantly attacking plaintiff attorneys, and medical expert-consultants who are legally required as necessary components of a professional negligence lawsuit, I suggest it would be much more productive and ultimately beneficial to all parties concerned, especially patients, if that intense energy and emotional zeal were to be directed toward the diminution or elimination of these mostly preventable errors.

In the words of the immortal Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

--Cyril H. Wecht, MD, JD, Pittsburgh

Editor's note: Dr. Wecht is a forensic pathologist and a medical-legal consultant.

ANYONE HAVE OPINION ABOUT THIS DUDE?

Rebuked

Andrew Wakefield is a criminal and should be prosecuted for such. He was the ground zero for the anti-vaccine movement when his bogus research came out in 1998. He later went on 60 Minutes and started a panic. His reputation, thankfully, has taken hit after hit and now an investigation by Britain slammed him hard. Unfortunately they only went after his method of research and not his conclusions. Those include:

• Taking blood samples from children at his son's birthday party and paying them each about $8


• Performing spinal taps on children at a hospital without due regard for how they might be affected


• Failing to disclose payments from lawyers representing parents who believed the vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella -- given as a single shot, referred to as the MMR vaccine -- had hurt their kids

For those who think that maybe the "ends justify the means" and his conclusions are worth looking at, you should know that his "study, however, was based on just 12 children. Lancet later declared that it should not have published the report, and further studies have not been able to replicate Wakefield's results."

For those parents who idolize Dr. Wakefield here in America (where he stays basically in exile), I am sure they will claim that this is just another attack by the co-conspiring medical profession and drug companies. It isn't. Kids are getting ill from the viruses that these vaccines protected them from and he is all to blame. It is time to stop the anti-vaccine madness.