Mistakes About Medical Mistakes

As a professing atheist, Kaitlyn has no faith in God, but she said that she has faith in the medical profession. So, I told her to trust only God, and double-check everything else because the eighth leading cause of death in the United States is medical mistakes.

Another atheist (Dimensio) took acceptation to that, and said, "According to the Centers for Disease Control, the top ten leading causes of death in the United States as of 2005 are:

1. Heart disease: 652,091
2. Cancer: 559,312
3. Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 143,579
4. Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 130,933
5. Accidents (unintentional injuries): 117,809
6. Diabetes: 75,119
7. Alzheimer's disease: 71,599
8. Influenza/Pneumonia: 63,001
9. Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 43,901
10. Septicemia: 34,136

Mr. Comfort, do you have more recent figures, have you simply conducted no research, or are you lying?”

Dimensio, here are some details:

"Medical Negligence: Widespread and Deadly. The Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Sciences has found that 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of preventable medical errors. Preventable medical errors kill more Americans than diabetes, influenza and Alzheimer's; and if tracked separately, would be the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States."

So I was wrong to trust the media when they said that medical mistakes were the eighth leading cause of death in the U.S. They are the sixth (although this too, could be wrong).

Watch as pedestrians step out in front of your car as you pull up at stop lights. They don’t even look at you, because they completely trust your ability to stop. They also trust your brakes. They trust the "cross now" sign, and they trust the lights that tell you to stop.

Hundreds of thousands of pedestrians are dead and maimed, because of a misdirected trust. Even those who love you can let you down, because of an inability to fulfill their word.

God is not like us. He is infallible. You can trust Him implicitly. He will never disappoint you. Ever. Check and double-check everything else, including the prescription your busy doctor scribbles out and the busy pharmacist fulfils. If you don’t, you may not be around to warn others not to make the same fatal mistake.