Number five here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/75042.php
Number three here: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/crime-law/medical-mistakes-are-third-leading-cause-death/nbBS5/
For a baseline, automobiles kill about 45,000 people every year in the US.
The anecdotal evidence alone is considerable, at least for anybody who has been an adult for a few decades.
I myself have been a victim of medical malpractice on two occasions and seriously considered litigation.
And when I was in college, a top college, the pre-meds were widely regarded as being some of the weakest students. And they were far and away the least interesting and the least curious students of all. Most of them were just seeking a certain respectability and lifestyle. Really, do you really want to be operated on by somebody who learned their physics without calculus?
(Sorry Paul to hijack your thread. Attic is too hard, so I am just going to be troll from now on.)
I’m not going to enter into a detailed discussion of this, because its’s really too complicated. If we can talk about medical malpractice, it’s because we set the standards of good medical practice much higher than we used to. The higher you draw the limit of good medical practice, the more malpractice you’ll find. There were no standards of good medical practice in the 19th century. Medicine is getting increasingly complex, because we know more. In the 19th century you were probably better off in average by not going to see the doctor, who’d probably poison you. You don’t honestly think that’s still the case? (As a side note, I think people are still probably better off by not going to the doctor if they have a very minor ailment, since they risk getting useless treatments with potential side effects, such as antibiotics for a virus infection.)
So really, I think the sort argumentation you’re referring to is seriously distorted. If you’re getting suboptimal treatment (and actually any treatment, like all human activity, is going to be suboptimal if you look at it under the microscope), it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worse than getting no treatment. That sort of argumentation tries to show that everything is somebody’s fault, and that’s just wrong. If do you die of pneumonia, it’s not like your doctor killed you, even if he didn’t make the right decisions. That kind of philosophy ends up with doctors making sure they don’t get sued instead of taking care of their patients. Maybe that’s already happened in America. Instead of trying to find who’s to blame we should be trying to find out how to do things better.
injury lawyers have a vested interest in exaggerating the risk. I suspect if we were able to see the original article things would look a little different
At the risk of offending any of my physician friends (none of whom can read Greek anyway,) let’s indeed get back to the Greek:
ὁ ἰατρὸς ἰοτόκος!
Well, as usual, I was just trying to make a joke. And I agree that it would be an extremely complicated discussion. And I also agree that rampant fault finding is about a deep a problem as one could find. As bad as it is in American law, it really goes back to the Western disaster of Judeo-Christian resentment. “I suffer, somebody must be to blame!” Nice to study the Greeks and get away from that for a few hours a day!
Still, the problem is not merely a matter of standards. And while it is true that contemporary medicine saves more than medicine in the past, it is also true that it kills more than medicine in the past. For example, modern psychiatry is clearly out of control. Would you ever take a drug prescribed by a psychiatrist? Scientology definitely got one thing right!
It was the AMA that did the study. And it was much discussed in the press at the time. Whatever interest the trial lawyers have, it is dwarfed by the medical industry, which if it were an independent country would have the 6th biggest GDP in the world.
And why should lawyers be spared in these hijacked away from the Greek thread?
ἐκ τοῦ νομικοῦ, οὐ νόμος, ἀλλὰ νομαί!
Very neat but if I got the sense right then ek tou dikanikoi, ou nomos alla dikai for the contrast between professionals, the concept of law, and legal procedures.
Rest of thread: Which is why whenever I get sick I respond by sacrificing poultry and going to sleep. 60% of the time it works 100%.
Qimmik, ha I get where you’re coming from, I don’t think it quite near that bad but I suspect the problem is that whenever one finds a good book in the area its flanked with several bad ones. I still prefer the work done here to, say, tragedy (shudders, falls of chair, cats and dogs howl at his distress as Scribo spasms at the very thought).
I guess that’s the reason I’ve kept clear of NT studies (since this has turned into a troll thread anyway, I don’t see any reason to refrain myself… 
)
Pster: As to medical malpractice… There are few things in life you couldn’t do better when you look at them in hindsight. Think about your own life. People die sooner or later, sometimes big mistakes are involved sometimes small ones, that’s the nature of things. Witch hunting isn’t going to improve anything. Injury lawyers turn my blood cold. I’m glad that sort of profiteering is inexistant in Finland. Any physician who works with critically ill patients will sooner or later make a mistake that leads to a fatal outcome (but in most cases of this sort only 30 or 40 years ago the patient would have died no matter what). If some doctor disagrees, he’s probably lying or in denial. Most of the the time doctors don’t get “caught”, because complaints are filed not because of bad medical compentence but because of bad interaction. Now I’m not saying if you’ve been subject to medical malpractice you shouldn’t be given adequate compensation. What I mean is that the American way of involving lawyers in everything disgusts me. It does absolutely nothing to improve the quality of the treatment itself. Good treatment is related to a good working atmosphere (possibility to consult senior physicians, possibility to report mistakes so they don’t happen again etc.), and witch hunts can only make it worse.
I will need a lawyer myself though, when I get caught stealing the LfgrE…
“whenever I get sick I respond by sacrificing poultry and going to sleep. 60% of the time it works 100%”
I highly recommend enkoimesis.
Those are wise words, Qimmik and Scribo. I guess I got carried away a bit myself. Hope there aren’t many malpractice lawyers reading. Another thing - Hermes was the god of thieves, but do we know how he was appealed to by thieves in Antiquity? Just asking, not that I wanted to steal anything…
do we know how he was appealed to by thieves in Antiquity? Just asking, not that I wanted to steal anything…
There’s a definite way to do this. First, you address him by his cult-names and invoke him wherever he is, listing some of his cult sites (maybe look those up in Wikipedia). Then you remind him of past favors–this isn’t the first time for you, right? Finally, you get around to business and ask for what you want him to do for you.
It can’t hurt to sacrifice a bull or two, but make sure they’re unblemished.
Damn right guys, hence the sleep. I find poultry helps things along. Plus you get a tasty snack. Awwww yis. (Actually isn’t there an Athenian speech largely to do with enkoimesis?)
Hermes: Well he had a few cultic aitia to do with theft and invention, but I’d largely say it was to do with his liminality (in every sense of the word) and his associations with lookouts and watch dogs.
“Actually isn’t there an Athenian speech largely to do with enkoimesis?”
Are you thinking of the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides?
I wonder if these things happened in antiquity. Maybe one of the classicsts around here knows of some evidence for this kind of thing. Maybe in Petronius? 
I don’t know about Greece and Rome, but the Code of Hammurabi (§ 218-220) had proper sanctions for medical malpractice - having his hand cut if the patient was a seignior, and paying compensation if the patient was a slave. This would be great practice even today - not only it would teach those doctors a lesson, but it would also make choosing one’s physician a lot easier. Count your doctors hands, and if one or both are missing, run! (be especially wary of protheses - those can look a lot like the real thing these days…)
(Incidentally, the link I provided says (§ 218) the malpractionist should have both hands cut off. The translation I looked up (Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament) says just one hand.)
I actually was referring to this specific kind of malpractice, these “never events”. And thus implying that this kind of bureaucratic malpractice is pretty recent and thus trying to score yet some more points against modern medicine. I could have made that clearer.
Not to change the subject, but how is your project going, Paul? How many fascicules have you “liberated” already? Are you up to ἐπαμύντωρ - θαῦμα (Lieferung 012) yet?