by Vic Shayne, PhD

What’s more dangerous, the disease or the treatment? We’ve been led to believe that in the Middle Ages doctors could be downright dangerous, causing all sorts of deaths due to strange, untested and baseless practices. But what kind of excuse is there in this modern age when medical treatment has been shown to cause more deaths than most other factors? Barbara Starfield, MD, in 2000, published some terrible findings that have embarrassed the modern medical community, shamed doctors and made hospital administrators hide under their desks. Dr. Starfield has shown that America’s health care system is the nation’s third leading cause of death!

In spite of the rising health care costs that provide the illusion of improving health care, the American people do not enjoy good health, compared with their counterparts in the industrialized nations.  Among thirteen countries including Japan, Sweden, France and Canada, the U.S. was ranked 12th, based on the measurement of 16 health indicators such as life expectancy, low-birth-weight averages and infant mortality.  In another comparison reported by the World Health Organization that used a different set of health indicators, the U.S. also fared poorly with a ranking of 15 among 25 industrialized nations.

Even more significantly, the medical system has played a large role in undermining the health of Americans.  According to several research studies in the last decade, a total of 225,000 Americans per year have died as a result of their medical treatments:    

• 12,000 deaths per year due to unnecessary surgery
• 7000 deaths per year due to medication errors in hospitals
• 20,000 deaths per year due to other errors in hospitals
• 80,000 deaths per year due to infections in hospitals
• 106,000 deaths per year due to negative effects of drugs

Thus, America’s healthcare-system-induced deaths are the third leading cause of the death in the U.S., after heart disease and cancer.

This startling and unsettling fact has led to a massive fallout and distrust in modern medicine. While, there is no match for the diagnostics technology in the United States, many have argued that there are still too many misdiagnoses, medical foul-ups, mistakes, overdosing, poor choice of drugs, drug overdoses, surgical errors and even doctor arrogance that leads to patient deaths and injuries.

The failure of modern medicine has increased the numbers of people who have turned to prevention, nutrition and natural health care.

Source:

1. Starfield, B. (2000, July 26). Is US health really the best in the world? Journal of the American Medical Association, 284(4), 483-485.

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