Doomed to Death By Medical Competence

By Atom Bergstrom

Atom’s Blog

Ivan Illich (Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health, 1975) wrote …

“The pain, dysfunction, disability, and anguish resulting from technical medical intervention now rival the morbidity due to traffic and industrial accidents and even war-related activities, and make the impact of medicine one of the most rapidly spreading epidemics of our time.”

We the People should have put the brakes on the Assassins In White way back in 1975 — 41 years ago — when Ivan Illich’s book was first published.

According to the same source …

“In 1971, between 12,000 and 15,000 malpractice suits were lodged in United States courts. Less than half of all malpractice claims were settled in less than eighteen months, and more than 10 percent of such claims remain unsettled for over six years. Between 16 and 20 percent of every dollar paid in malpractice insurance went to compensate the victim; the rest was paid to lawyers and medical experts. In such cases, doctors are vulnerable only to the charge of having acted against the medical code, of the incompetent performance of prescribed treatment, or of dereliction out of greed or laziness. The problem, however, is that most of the damage inflicted by the modern doctor does not fall into any of these categories. It occurs in the ordinary practice of well-trained men and women who have learned to bow to prevailing professional judgment and procedure, even though they know (or could and should know) what damage they do.”

In short, medical competence kills MILLIONS more people than medical incompetence.
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