[2mnydogs]

Rather have doctors cutting you open vs. police is a very stupid comparison and makes no sense at all.

[jacksonbrown]

I'm not going to address other races that have at some point in the worlds history, were enslaved by another race. I'm only sticking to the sufferage (sic) Black Americans endured after slavery ended.

Sir / madam, you have conveniently disregarded my question. To wit, "Why do other minorities thrive that were never slaves?"

Anyway, you wrote "It's also unfortunate that the violence all too prevalent in the black race"

Now that's one sentiment upon which we both can agree.

Since LBJ, blacks have allowed their race to be "purchased" by those politicians who, instead of working towards normalization of economic opportunities, have thrown trillions at the problem, just to buy votes.

As a result, blacks, who once had an enviable and strong family construct, now, without fathers, place the burden of child-raising on working Moms.

And where do those children find their male roll models?

On the street, in prison, gangsters, foul-mouthed rappers, etc.

[Heyitsrick]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

Sorry, but those medical mistake numbers are totally bogus. They are counting any death during a hospitalization that also had a "mistake" involved. Here's how it goes: The doctor ordered a patient to get Tylenol at 6 PM. The nurse needs to administer that dose between 5:30 and 6:30. It is given at 6:31-----MISTAKE!!!! The patient dies of his underlying malignancy 2 weeks later----guess what, it is counted in their bogus "death by mistake" tally. A classic case of post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this because of this, the sine qua non of faulty cause/effect reasoning). A pharmacist sends up an IV bag with 10 mg of solumedrol instead of the 20 ordered, the patient dies of an unrelated cardiac event a week later---same thing, death by MISTAKE!!!. Very few of these "mistakes" have anything to do with a patient death, and very few of those mistakes are made by the doctor. Now anyone who wants to argue, feel free, but be forewarned that I chaired the quality assurance committee of my hospital for 10 years, was chief of staff for 4 years and sat on the board of directors. These were the numbers and events that we were required to submit to the state health department, so the bean counters could make a big deal out of nothing, and then the media made an even bigger deal out of it.

Off-topic: I'm guessing you may agree that someone who tested positive for COVID-19 and subsequently died didn't necessarily die of COVID-19 effects at all, no? Let's say they already had high blood pressure, or diabetes or any number of underlying conditions. Yet, they tested positive for COVID-19. Bingo - there's a COVID-19 fatality, based on a positive test. Worse, even suspected COVID-19 fatalities (people never tested for COVID-19) are now being counted.

[Heyitsrick]

Originally Posted by GoodLife

I was assured by another Doctor on this forum that ProPublica.org was a very good source. Their article quotes studies done by Institute of Medicine, Inspector General for Health and Human Services, and the Journal for Patient Safety.

Here's another one from John Hopkins. Are these guys bean counters too?

Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S. Analyzing medical death rate data over an eight-year period, Johns Hopkins patient safety experts have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error in the U.S.

Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S. - 05/03/2016

So you are saying all these Doctor/hospital deaths are bogus? It's all the nurses fault?

Can you post a link to another unbiased source showing the true number? I think that some might think a source from Doctor organizations might be biased.

I'm not trying to knock Doctors down, several of them have saved my life, just comparing the death rates vs Police shootings of unarmed civilians. I can change the title to "medical error deaths" if that's more accurate.

There's a paragraph in the Hopkins study that lends credence both to your primary point about medical errors numbers, and to Golfing Eagle's point about mistakenly laying this all off on doctors:

Originally Posted by John Hopkins Study on Medical Errors

The researchers caution that most of medical errors aren’t due to inherently bad doctors, and that reporting these errors shouldn’t be addressed by punishment or legal action. Rather, they say, most errors represent systemic problems, including poorly coordinated care, fragmented insurance networks, the absence or underuse of safety nets, and other protocols, in addition to unwarranted variation in physician practice patterns that lack accountability.

[villageuser]

Originally Posted by GoodLife

The numbers I quote are from the Washington Post, and they are for UNARMED CIVILIANS killed by Police in 2019. Police shoot lots more ARMED CRIMINALS.

Someone could have been walking down the street with a bat cause they were coming from the park, and be categorized as “armed”. Just because one is carrying or hiding a potentially lethal weapon does not mean it had anything to do with the police stop or the killing. Someone shot in the back while running away from the cop is still unjustifiable homicide.

All those scenarios would not be included under the category of “unarmed” but should be included if one is comparing pointless killings by cops versus deaths caused by medical incompetence.

[matandch]

Red herring, straw man arguments. You’re comparing apples and turtles.

[beachman46]

Great dialogue from both sides about race. There is hope..

[TomPerry]

One other fact contained the OP that has not been discussed yet - - - - Doctors Kill More People Than COVID-19!!!

[banjobob]

The BLM movement is a scam , if not what protests are there for all the black murders every week and in major cities. Namely Chicago anyone funding this charade is foolish.

[MandoMan]

I have huge respect for physicians—the vast majority who are good ones. Not for the bad ones. The worst are those selling pain pills of various sorts to drug addicts. These people make possible the deaths of many thousands of people a year. However, there are also many people who sue doctors because of a bad result, and there are thousands of lawyers who make their wealth trying to make doctors look guilty of things they didn’t do. I spent two years as an operating room scrub tech in top hospitals in Colorado and California. I scrubbed on over a thousand surgeries. I only recall seeing one case of malpractice (a general surgeon trying to do a hip pinning). (I’m not counting the famous gynecologist who, after a c-section, swing the placenta around his head by the umbilical cord as if it were a lariat, hollering like a cowboy, leaving a trail of blood on the walls around the room. The patient and anesthesiologist had already left, so no one was harmed.)

In 1974-75 I was an operating room supervisor in a hospital in Rwanda. I’ve written about it in my recent book “They Don’t Eat Missionaries Anymore.” One doctor I worked with sewed the intestines into the incision of two patients in six weeks without my noticing. The patients died after he left. Was it murder? Not really. Should he have noticed? Definitely. He now lives in south Florida, and according to the DEA, holds the U.S. record in most pain pills purchased for redistribution: 1,960,000 pills! So, have people died because of his prescriptions or pills sold to make him wealthy? I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess hundreds have died thanks to him. Are these lives that matter?

Originally Posted by GoodLife

So we had a black man who was killed during an arrest by Police. This led to huge protests/riots/arson.looting all over the country.

So I looked at the numbers, and thought, what other professions kill unarmed civilians, by mistake or on purpose?

According to the Washington Post database, a total of 41 unarmed people were shot and killed by US police in 2019. The racial composition of victims is:

White: 19
Black: 9
Hispanic: 6
Other: 4
Unknown: 3
Total 41

In some of these cases Police were charged and tried, others were ruled justifiable.

According to the DOJ Police have more than 50 million encounters with citizens every year, traffic stops, domestic violence, burglaries etc etc. Any of these encounters can turn violent. Of course you would like for the number to be zero, but Police killings of unarmed citizens are statistically insignificant compared to the number of encounters.

So chance of unarmed civilian being killed by Police = 41/50,000,000 = 0.00000082

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published the famous “To Err Is Human” report, which dropped a bombshell on the medical community by reporting that up to 98,000 people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals. The number was initially disputed, but is now widely accepted by doctors and hospital officials — and quoted ubiquitously in the media. More recent studies estimate the number is now more than 200,000 per year.

How Many Die From Medical Mistakes in U.S. Hospitals? — ProPublica

Average number of hospitalizations per year in US is 36,000,000

so chance of being killed by medical error is 200,000/36,000,000 = 0.00555

A small chance, but much much larger than Police chance

You can say well Doctors don't kill people on purpose, these are mistakes. Same can be said for Police, in a few cases they might be convicted of murder, but mostly they are ruled as manslaughter or excessive use of force. If Police really wanted to kill a lot of people of any race they could, they are armed and good shots. The miniscule numbers of this actually happening are statistically insignificant.

Do Doctors ever kill on purpose? Unfortunately they do.

Ohio doctor charged with 25 counts of murdering patients with fatal doses of fentanyl.
His trial has been delayed because of covid, so we will see what a jury says about this.
That's just one Doctor who killed more than 50% of what Police did last year.

How many Doctors go to jail every year for malpractice or murder? Do they avoid prosecution because their insurance pays out large sums?

To err is human for some but not all?

[rakopacz@comcast.net]

Doctors don’t go around deliberately seeking patients out to kill. Unfortunately many cops are racist and enjoy murdering blacks. There is a difference.

[GoodLife]

Originally Posted by rakopacz@comcast.net

Doctors don’t go around deliberately seeking patients out to kill. Unfortunately many cops are racist and enjoy murdering blacks. There is a difference.

There's no proof of this in the actual numbers. Only 9 unarmed blacks were killed by Police last year. There are currently 700,000 law enforcement officers in USA. They must be really bad shots if they are so racist and "enjoy murdering blacks"

[tophcfa]

This is a ridiculous thread. How about all the lives both doctors and police officers save. There are a couple of doctors that saved my life who I will be eternally grateful to. Stay safe.

[roscoguy]

Originally Posted by GoodLife

So we had a black man who was killed during an arrest by Police. This led to huge protests/riots/arson.looting all over the country.

So I looked at the numbers, and thought, what other professions kill unarmed civilians, by mistake or on purpose?

According to the Washington Post database, a total of 41 unarmed people were shot and killed by US police in 2019. The racial composition of victims is:

White: 19
Black: 9
Hispanic: 6
Other: 4
Unknown: 3
Total 41

In some of these cases Police were charged and tried, others were ruled justifiable.

According to the DOJ Police have more than 50 million encounters with citizens every year, traffic stops, domestic violence, burglaries etc etc. Any of these encounters can turn violent. Of course you would like for the number to be zero, but Police killings of unarmed citizens are statistically insignificant compared to the number of encounters.

So chance of unarmed civilian being killed by Police = 41/50,000,000 = 0.00000082

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published the famous “To Err Is Human” report, which dropped a bombshell on the medical community by reporting that up to 98,000 people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals. The number was initially disputed, but is now widely accepted by doctors and hospital officials — and quoted ubiquitously in the media. More recent studies estimate the number is now more than 200,000 per year.

How Many Die From Medical Mistakes in U.S. Hospitals? — ProPublica

Average number of hospitalizations per year in US is 36,000,000

so chance of being killed by medical error is 200,000/36,000,000 = 0.00555

A small chance, but much much larger than Police chance

You can say well Doctors don't kill people on purpose, these are mistakes. Same can be said for Police, in a few cases they might be convicted of murder, but mostly they are ruled as manslaughter or excessive use of force. If Police really wanted to kill a lot of people of any race they could, they are armed and good shots. The miniscule numbers of this actually happening are statistically insignificant.

Do Doctors ever kill on purpose? Unfortunately they do.

Ohio doctor charged with 25 counts of murdering patients with fatal doses of fentanyl.
His trial has been delayed because of covid, so we will see what a jury says about this.
That's just one Doctor who killed more than 50% of what Police did last year.

How many Doctors go to jail every year for malpractice or murder? Do they avoid prosecution because their insurance pays out large sums?

To err is human for some but not all?

Your police shooting numbers seem to be taken from a source other than the Washington Post. According to their actual database, there were 55 police shootings of unarmed people in 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...ings-database/
Then, there are other sources that are not limited to only shootings. According to Mapping Police Violence, there were as many as 114 deaths of unarmed people caused by police in 2019. National Trends — Mapping Police Violence

I don't really understand the point of this thread. Maybe still trying to downplay the obvious police misconduct leading to George Floyd's death by comparing unrelated numbers of police shootings to medical errors? They both are preventable causes, but for the most part so are deaths from auto accidents, heart attacks, workplace accidents, strokes, drownings & lightning strikes. No real correlation that I can see.
Are you saying that the medical field needs to be held more accountable for accidental deaths? If that's it, then what would police-related deaths have to do with it? Puzzling...

“How many Doctors go to jail every year for malpractice or murder?” Likely not as many as there should be. But either way, these facts are no reason to ignore the problems with unnecessary police violence. Why use one problem to excuse another?