There is a physician who writes to this paper who is an obvious gun control advocate. It would seem that
a person of his professional stature would be well informed about the issue and about his own
profession. Not so, apparently.
As per the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, bad hospital care
contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a recent year. As per the Journal of
Patient Safety, between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year go to the hospital for care and suffer
some type of preventable harm that contributes to death. Wow, talk about killing the innocent!
It would seem that if this person was so dead set on correcting an issue that leads to deaths in this
country, he would concentrate on an issue about which he could have an impact, namely his profession.
Deaths through physician or hospital negligence presently ranks third in the order of causes of death in
this country, being preceded only by heart disease and cancer.
The medical industry took exception to the numbers and admitted that the figure was closer to the 100,000
deaths in 1999, as reported by AARP in an article published in April 9, 2012. According to figures for
2009, there were approximately 850,000 physicians in the U.S. in that year. That means that, based upon
the average, there was one death for every 8.5 physicians. It would be one death per 1.9 doctors if a
person used the upper figure of 440,000 quoted by the Journal of Patient Safety.
According to a Gallop poll, approximately 47% of the households in this country admit to having at least
one gun, but the figure is most likely higher than that. Put another way, other sources put the figure
at 65,000,000 gun owners in 2009. In that year, 31,014 deaths occurred by guns, excluding legal
intervention. So, that means there is one death by gun for every 2095 gun owners. So, you are 1102 times
safer approaching an unknown gun owner than you are a doctor while he is practicing his profession.
That’s an interesting fact to ponder.
So, if this gentleman wants to champion a campaign to fix a lethal problem, maybe he should stick to his
own profession and advocate some overhaul and controls of the medical industry.
George "Bill" Davisson
Haskins