Doctors kill more unarmed civilians than Police
 

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?

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.

Very interesting.

How many of those Doctor caused deaths were a result of the Doctor's slice vs. a hook???
That's what inquiring minds want to know.

I would suspect the "slice", especially in the OR. We haven't used hooks in a hundred years:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

PS--read post #2. Most of the "mistakes" are irrelevant, and probably less than 2% are committed by the doctor, so please don't refer to them as "doctor deaths" I think the term "bean counter's anomaly" describes it better

I was assured by another Doctor on this forum that ProPublica.org was a very good source. :icon_wink: 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.

Whatever the odds, I still prefer a doctor to cut me open, rather than a policeman!

I would recommend a stronger grip.


:clap2:

Before looking at numbers I knew this was incorrect
 

2019 Washington post 999! People killed, since 2015 5400 killed Washington post , in 2019 1004 killed by police , so far in 2020, killed by police 172 white , 88 blacks,57 Hispanic , 14 other, and 98 race unknown , I guess there are still people who think no one knows how to google, you can see the breakdown of state s for those years , all I had was 3 minutes to find about 10 sites including FBI lol

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.

I'm going out on a limb here but I'm guessing the OP is not black and has a very limited idea of what it's like being a black person?

I do understand the point being made. The facts are not lost on me.

Not that it matters but I did grow up very poor, had to work full time instead of going to high school and maybe about 20% of my friends were black. I'm only pointing out my background as a point of reference.

Having black friends really let's a person see what they see. I can honestly say that there was never a time when racism didn't get brought up. Some of the situations we discussed seemed more likely that racism wasn't actual but rather perceived. I could disagree with my friends and it didn't cause any problems most of the time. It was shocking that a friend thought I was being racist when one day I said "boy am I tired" as I let out a deep breath. My friend instantly wanted to fight over that statement. It actually took a rather uncomfortable amount of time to convince him I wasn't calling him a boy. Again, I'm pointing out how a friend perceived racism when it didn't exist. I do try to see things from a different perspective as a result of my experiences.

As far as the police are concerned, I could easily recount no less than a dozen times I was with my friends and the police harrassed us for no reason. It was brutal to witness the outright racism and be a white person.

I absolutely don't condone resisting arrest, attacking a police officer or even disrespecting law enforcement in any way. I wish it would stop because it's not helping.

Unfortunately fatherless families, gangs, welfare, anti-white peer pressure etc are underlying issues that possibly lead to anger and rebellion? I don't have the answers.

What I do know is that statistics don't give you a complete picture. They are indisputable when it comes to showing the results of a broken system but they don't give us a road map to the solution.

It's so easy to say stop breaking the law, finish school, get a job and don't have kids out of wedlock.

That's what I ended up doing.
But that didn't work for the young man walking home one night minding his own business. He was a shy, introverted 19 year old that was confronted by several officers for looking "suspicious". He was killed and it was all on police body cameras. He didn't resist, was handcuffed and laying face down saying he couldn't breath. 5 officers kept him pinned down and then they had medical personnel give a powerful sedative.

This shouldn't happen to anyone of any color.

I support the police and I support police reforms that weed out bad cops instead of protecting them. BLM doesn't mean white lives don't matter so stop being offended if that bothers you.

Yes, you're the only one here who has ever had black friends. LOL I grew up in Chicago just for starters, played on a lot of sports teams that were mixed races. Lots of black friends.

I've been harassed by Police in groups of all whites, been tear gassed at Berkeley during People's Park, and was once pulled over by cops in California driving my girlfriends red mini cooper. They told me over their loudspeaker to get out of my car, hands raised and put them on the roof. As I looked back both cops were behind the doors of their cruiser with their guns aimed at me. I complied 100% They approached and as one officer patted me down, the other one stood 15 feet away with his gun pointed at me. Turns out, they heard of an armed car jacking on their radio, saw me and pulled me over. After seeing registration etc they apologized and told me what had happened.

There's no doubt that blacks as a whole are poorer, less educated than whites. But we've been throwing gobs of money at the problem, writing laws to prevent discrimination, etc for years. We had a black President for 8 years. Problems still exists with fatherless black families, high crime rates etc.

Why do other minorities exist like Asians, latinos etc that seem able to thrive in our system, schools, economy? Sooner or later we stop hearing the boy who cried wolf.

You answered my first question. You do have limited knowledge of what it's like living as a black person.

You make a false statement to support your comment. You claimed I was the only one on this site that has ever had black friends. I never made such a claim.

You claimed to have had black friends but only state that you played sports on mixed raced teams.

You give an example of how rough life was for you as if your run-in with the cops compares to what black people go through. It was a mistake and the police apologized to you. Oh, you poor thing. How do you even sleep at night?

You state that blacks are more poorer and less educated despite gobs of money being thrown at the problem. Laws are written to prevent discrimination and Obama had 8 years to fix the problem but failed. Well, I guess we should throw in towel? After all there's a law against discrimination. Job well done if I do say so myself.

Why do other minorities thrive that were never slaves? That didn't have the same history?

Well done sir, I'm sure all your black friends agree with your assessment and you certainly know how it feels to be black.

It's funny that your comment will stand as the last word and mine will get deleted. Who says white privilege doesn't exist. Come to TV and see it for yourself.

Why do other minorities thrive that were never slaves?

So to which minorities are you referring?

The Irish, Italians, Orientals?

Maybe they would remind you of the potato famine, Roman and Mussolini rule, communist oligarths.

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 Black Americans endured after slavery ended. This is what is tearing America apart right now.

Some people in the black race feel that not enough has been done to address the inequities that they feel still exist in America.

Not all black people feel this way but that doesn't mean that the ones that do can't express their feelings for change. A lot of other races support the movement to rid our country of painful reminders of the past and a lot of companies are also supportive of this movement.

Unfortunately, other groups are hijacking this movement and promoting violence to further their agenda.

It's also unfortunate that the violence all too prevalent in the black race has giving opponents to this movement statistical ammunition to justify the status quo.

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

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.

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.

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:

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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"

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.

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... :shrug:

“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?

The problem is not with your source, the problem is WHAT they are counting. In the example I gave, how can you possibly believe it was "the nurse's fault". The problem is that regulatory authorities have decided to count meaningless nonsense in the "death" statistics. My girlfriend is a nurse that works in informatics. They now want to count "near mistakes" What the heck is a "near mistake" ?

Now, there are some "bad" doctors out there, and there are mistakes they make that cause patient deaths. I could tell you stories that would scare you to "death". But the magnitude is nowhere near what these studies report, again, most of these "mistakes" are irrelevant.

Looks like WAPO updated their numbers. So in 2019 55 unarmed people were killed, 15 Black and 25 White. Doesn't matter, still a miniscule problem when you look at the millions of encounters Police have with civilians every year. In many of these cases, juries find Police not guilty of intentional murder. In many cases it is just human error in a split second decision.

WAPO also said

“The number of black and unarmed people fatally shot by police has declined since 2015." (by 60%)

“Fatal police shootings are relatively rare events in a country where nearly 40,000 people die from firearms each year. Hundreds of thousands of police officers work in America, most of whom will never fire their guns on duty.”

According to statistics reported to the FBI, 89 law enforcement officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents in 2019. Of these, 48 officers died as a result of felonious acts, and 41 officers died in accidents. Weapons. Offenders used firearms to kill 44 of the 48 victim officers. Four officers were killed with vehicles used as weapons.

15 of the LEOs killed in 2019 were killed by Blacks. Where's the big hubbub about that?

Every year 1000's of blacks are murdered by blacks. Where's the hubbub about that?

Black on white violent crime is much larger than white on black crime. No hubub

I'm pretty sure a jury will convict the Police of murder or something less in Floyd case. I don't have to downplay Police misconduct, the actual numbers show it's way less of a problem than Black on Black murders, and at least in 2019, no bigger a problem than Blacks murdering Police officers.

The point of this post is to show the scale of these issues. Whether it's Doctors or nurses etc, several well known entities like John Hopkins have found that over 200,000 die each year due to medical errors.

Your a smart individual, why are you having trouble understanding this? 200,000 patients/year do not die DUE to medical errors, 200,000 people die and HAD a so called medical error during their hospital stay. There is no strong cause and effect correlation at work with these statistics. It's like getting your oil changed on Monday and dying in a car accident Friday----the oil change did not CAUSE the accident.

What you say is probably true. Can you post a source for the true numbers? I assumed that these organizations like John Hopkins know what they are doing.

Besides, I can prove my point without the medical error deaths. I would bet Doctors Intentionally kill more people per year than Police kill unarmed civilians. The Ohio Dr is on trial for killing 25 with fentanyl, that's 50% of the Police total.

But I don't think Doctors are murdering Nazis because a few of them are bad. I play golf with several of them :icon_wink: Nor do I think Police are racists who kill blacks indiscriminately. The actual numbers are miniscule in relation to other stats.

Unfortunately there is no source for "true" numbers, because the powers that be aren't interested in true numbers. NY State health dept. spends many millions of dollars to collect this data, so the last thing they want is for the data to show nothing of significance.

Perhaps our problem is that the comparison between medical "mistakes" and police deaths is apples and oranges. I agree with your point that the number of deaths caused by police is very small compared to the number of interactions the police have with citizens. And the media is quick to overlook that in the recent highly publicized deaths, the victims all were resisting arrest. If they had just followed the instructions of the LEO's, as they are required to do by law, they would be alive today. That's no excuse for the indifferent use of excessive force displayed by the officers involved in those cases, but if you don't go swimming in the ocean, you don't get eaten by sharks.

Good facts and reasoning. Unfortunately, it does not help the anarchists intent on destroying the country.

Correct. I also think most of the armchair quarterbacks posting here about Police brutality have no idea what it is like to be one, especially in high crime areas.

No one in the states has been a "slave" in America. Being black is not an excuse for failure. It's not a reason for failure. It is more like an accusation against others for their failure. I do not care if someone says they have friends that are black or that they had neighbors or coworkers that were black. Coming from a multi-ethnicity family, I don't make excuses for my failures and do not sympathize with anyone else in my family for their failures. A failure is something temporary whereas a loser is one that refuses to pick themselves back up when they have a momentary failure. History is full of those that failed and later became successful. Slavery is NOT an excuse for today's people.

"White privilege?" How does the Villages prove "white privilege?" There are a lot of folks in the Villages that are on a very limited and fixed income. Being "white" is not being "privileged." Making excuses for someone's failure to pick themselves up and better themselves does not help them. Throwing money at the situation does not solve the problem. One does not expect an opportunity to drop in their lap. One seeks the opportunity and proves they deserve or qualify for the opportunity.

Being "white" is not a privilege, it's a fact of genetics/DNA. Driving is a "privilege." To say that being "white" is special is being RACIST. Someone saying they lived near, with or as a black is presuming black is on a lower level than white and therefore is another indication of racism.

Jesus died on the cross so that ALL LIVES MATTER.

What a really inane comparison. Use a little bit of common sense.

You're just making excuses for abusive police. Even one aggressive bigoted cop is too many. Police need better training, need to hire college graduates only, realize that even one abusive or racist incident is grounds for termination, and limit those with famiy backgrounds in law enforcement.