Re: Shelhigh: Anatomy of an FDA Medical Device Products Seizure

[Guest guest]

I recently read an article on Health Affairs about how many preventable

medical mistakes occur and the conspiracy of silence in hushing them up -

often as a result of medical device failures like the ones you described,

but also there are a lot of preventable human errors..medicine mistakes,

etc..

Many occur and are covered up by hospitals and medical staff because they

don't want to be sued by injured patients or grief-stricken family members.

Their attorneys encourage them to do this.. (the denial and concealment..)

This was from a book review I read recently that gets to the point about the

stupidity of this very well:

* " The amazing thing about Complications: A

Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science is that it got

published at all. Not that this book isn't highly

publishable; it's well written, engrossing, candid,

and moving. But it enters dangerous territory

in a litigious society: Atul Gawande exposes

the fallibility, uncertainty, and mystery

of medicine in true stories about real people. In

a world where overly cautious attorneys protect

physicians and hospitals from overly zealous

trial lawyers by urging clients to cloak and

hide errors, Complications is testimony that at

least one doctor in one system was permitted

to speak openly about medicine's failures. He

does so to make an important point: Where errors

are hidden, learning is squelched, and so,

like Sisyphus, workers in these systems are

compelled to err and err again. "

*

I've also read recently that since patients are delaying or deciding not to

have elective medical procedures as a result of the economy that the medical

profession is responding by encouraging people to have procedures more

aggressively - to make up for the decreased income.

What that means is that doctors are sometimes encouraging people to get

dangerous operations they don't need.. just to make the money.