Fact-Checker to the O.R.!(medical errors and malpractice)

• Author: Ehrenreich, Barbara

You ask why I have this red and white ribbon pinned to my lapel. Well, a pink ribbon, as you know, stands for breast cancer awareness, and a solid red one signifies concern about AIDS, but I had to design this red and white one myself to call attention to the medical error epidemic.

The National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine reported at the end of November that 44,000 to 98,000 people die every year as a result of medical errors--which beats breast cancer, AIDS, car accidents, diabetes, and pneumonia. And that's just the number of victims in hospitals. If we had good stats on the number of people killed by medical errors in other settings--nursing homes and day-surgery centers, for example--the toll would probably be right up there with lung cancer and stroke. Adding insult to grievous bodily injury, there are no criminal penalties for medical errors. Docs who poison and maim may have to pay higher malpractice insurance premiums, but they're as entitled to their fees as those who actually help.

Everyone's taking this much too calmly. People who would never think of lighting up a cigarette or chomping down on a double cheeseburger blithely go on visiting doctors and swallowing prescription drugs.

Where is the medical error equivalent of ACT-UP, which could stand, in this case, for Action to Control the Travesties of Uninformed Physicians?

Who is organizing a Walk for Life to demand a "cure" for medical error?

Why is there no MADD--Mothers Against Destructive Docs?

Maybe we're just getting inured to the error-full way of life.

NASA mixes up centimeters and inches and sends its first Mars Polar Lander to a fiery death--and they have no idea where the second one went.

The frontrunning Republican Presidential candidate thinks that Pakistan's head of state is named "General" and describes the military coup that put him in power as a free election.

President Clinton bombs a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant thinking it was manufacturing biological weapons; he bombs Pakistan thinking it was Afghanistan. And what about the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade?

As in that case, we must ask whether all of these fatal medical errors are actually mistakes--meaning that the appropriate charge would be manslaughter--or something more akin to homicide. We know what the doctors would say: "Hey, so I thought it was the left kidney when it was really the right kidney that had to come out. You try telling left from right when you're wearing a...