Lucian Leape, a Harvard University professor who conducted the most
comprehensive study of medical errors in the United States, has estimated
that one million patients nationwide are injured by errors during hospital
treatment each year and that 120,000 die as a result.
-- Harvard University

In their study, Leape and his colleagues examined patient records at
hospitals throughout the state of New York. Their 1991 report found that one
of every 200 patients admitted to a hospital died as a result of a hospital
error.

That number of deaths is the equivalent of what would occur if a jumbo jet
crashed every day; it is three times the 43,000 people killed each year in
U.S. automobile accidents.

"It's by far the number one problem" in health care, said Leape, an adjunct
professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Researchers such as Leape say that not only are medical errors not reported
to the public, but those reported to hospital authorities represent roughly
5 to 10 percent of the number of actual medical mistakes at a typical
hospital.

"The bottom line is we have a system that is terribly out of control," said
Robert Brook, a professor of medicine at the University of California at Los
Angeles.

"It's really a joke to worry about the occasional plane that goes down when
we have thousands of people who are killed in hospitals every year." Brook's
recognition of the extent of hospital errors is shared by many of medicine's
leaders.

Care -- not treatment -- is the answer. Drugs, surgery and hospitals become
increasingly dangerous for chronic disease cases. Facilitating the God-given
healing capacity by improving the diet, exercise, and lifestyle is the key.

Effective interventions for the underlying emotional and spiritual wounding
behind most chronic disease is critical for the reinvention of our medical
paradigm. These numbers suggest that reinvention of our medical paradigm is
called for.


World-Wide News On Medical Mistakes

Study Slams Medical Error Rate in Nation Philadelphia Inquirer

A panel of the National Academy of Sciences, in a highly critical report,
yesterday called for a major national effort to reduce medical errors by
developing a mandatory reporting system and asking Congress to establish a
center to study them.
The 220-page report, written by a 19-member committee of the Academy's
Institute of Medicine, set as a goal a 50 percent reduction in the nation's
"stunningly high rate of medical errors" within five years.

It estimated that errors from medical treatment kill up to 98,000 people in
U.S. hospitals every year and characterized the problem as among the
nation's leading causes of death and injury.

Several members of the committee said in interviews yesterday that the
report was intended as a loud call to action for the health-care industry,
which it said has not acted swiftly enough to address the causes of errors.

"What it says is 'enough already,' " said Lucian Leape, a committee member
and adjunct professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public
Health. "It's a matter of holding people's feet to the fire and stop talking
about errors and start doing something."


Medical Mistakes Often Unreported
Detroit News
Based on a recent report by the Institute of Medicine, which estimates 36
error-related hospital deaths per 100,000 people, 3,534 Michiganians died
last year due to medical mistakes.

Patients reported 2,027 complaints about health care organizations to the
state, but Tom Lindsay, director of the Michigan Bureau of Health Services,
said those likely represent just a fraction of the mistakes.


Medical Mistakes
New York Times
The NEW YORK TIMES reported that 5% of people admitted to hospitals, or
about 1.8 million people per year, in the U.S. pick up an infection while
there. Such infections are called "iatrogenic" -- meaning "induced by a
physician," or, more loosely, "caused by medical care."

Iatrogenic infections are directly responsible for 20,000 deaths among
hospital patients in the U.S. each year, and they contribute to an
additional 70,000 deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease
Control CDC). The dollar cost of iatrogenic infections is $4.5 billion,
according to the CDC.


National Patient Safety Foundation

A new poll from the nonprofit National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF)
finds that 42 percent of people say they've been affected by physician
errors, either directly or through a friend or relative.

If the survey of roughly 1,500 people accurately represents the general
public, it could mean that more than 100 million Americans have experience
with medical mistakes.

More alarming, according to the survey, is the fact that in one out of three
cases the error permanently harmed the patient's health.

Dr. Leape is a board member of the NPSF, which was founded by the American
Medical Association in June of this year to improve health care safety.

AMA leaders say it's time to bring the issue out into the open, rather than
living in constant fear that any admission of error will launch a flood of
malpractice lawsuits.

Leape's own research has shown that the tally of medical mistakes made each
year could reach 3 million, with total costs as high as $200 billion.

The survey found that 40 percent of the people who had experienced a medical
mistake pointed to misdiagnoses and wrong treatments as the problem.
Medication errors accounted for 28 percent of mistakes.

And 22 percent of respondents reported slip-ups during medical procedures.

Half of the errors occurred in hospitals, and 22 percent in doctors'
offices.

Add to that the details cited below suggesting that legal, prescribed drugs
are far more likely to result in death than trash bought illicitly on the
street:

Number_of_United_States_Deaths_per_Year.____
____________________________________________
TOBACCO__________________340,000_to_450,000_
____________________________________________
ALCOHOL._Not_including______________150,000+
________50_percent_of_all___________________
________highway_deaths_and__________________
________65_percent_of_all_murders.__________
____________________________________________
ASPIRIN._Including______________180_to_1000+
________deliberate_overdose.________________
____________________________________________
CAFFEINE._From_stress,_______1000_to_10,000_
________ulcers_and__________________________
________triggering_irregular________________
________heartbeats,_etc.____________________
____________________________________________
LEGAL_DRUG_OVERDOSE._______14,000_to_27,000_
________Deliberate_or_______________________
________accidental._From_legal,_____________
________prescribed_or_patent________________
________medicines_and_or_mixing_____________
________with_alcohol,_e.g.__________________
________Valium_and_alcohol._________________
____________________________________________
ILLICIT_DRUG_OVERDOSE________3,800_to_5,200_
________Deliberate__________________________
________or_accidental._From_________________
________all_illegal_drugs.__________________
____________________________________________
MARIJUANA________________________________0__
____________________________________________



Or this referring to the safety and efficacy of herbal and mineral
supplements:

WHERE ARE THE BODIES?

THE SAFETY OF VITAMINS AND FOOD SUPPLEMENTS

(A presentation by Andrew W. Saul to the Government of Canada, House of
Commons Standing Committee on Health, specifically in reference to C-420, on
May 12, 2005, Ottawa, Canada.)

Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen:

Natural health products, such as amino acids, herbs, vitamins and other
nutritional supplements, have an extraordinarily safe usage history. In the
USA, close to half of the population takes herbal or nutritional supplements
every day. That is over 145,000,000 individual doses daily, for a total of
over 53 billion doses annually.

The most elementary of forensic arguments is, where are the bodies?

To try to answer this question, we may turn to the 2003 Annual Report of the
American Association of Poison Control Centers Toxic Exposures Surveillance
System, published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, Vol. 22,
No. 5, September 2004.

(available here as a PDF file)

This report states that there have been four deaths attributed to
vitamin/mineral supplements in the year 2003. Two of those deaths were due
to iron poisoning. That means there have been two deaths allegedly caused by
vitamins, out of over 53 billion doses. That is a product safety record
without equal.

Pharmaceutical drugs, on the other hand, caused over 2,000 poison
control-reported deaths, including

Antibiotics: 13 deaths

Antidepressants: 274 deaths

Antihistamines: 64 deaths

Cardiovascular drugs: 162 deaths

It would be incorrect to state that only prescription drugs kill people. In
2003, there were 59 deaths from aspirin alone. That is a death rate nearly
thirty times higher than that of iron supplements. Furthermore, there were
still more deaths from aspirin in combination with other products.

Fatalities are by no means limited to drug products. In the USA in the year
2003, there was a death from "Cream/lotion/makeup," a death from "Granular
laundry detergent," one death from "Gun bluing," one death from plain soap,
one death from baking soda, and one death from table salt.

Other deaths reported by the American Association of Poison Control Centers
included:

aerosol air fresheners: 2 deaths

nailpolish remover: 2 deaths

perfume/cologne/aftershave: 2 deaths

charcoal: 3 deaths

dishwashing detergent: 3 deaths

(and interestingly, weapons of mass destruction: 0 deaths)

In America in 2003, there were 28 deaths from heroin, and yet acetaminophen
("Tylenol") alone killed 147. Though acetaminophen killed over five times as
many, few would say that we should make this generally-regarded-as-safe,
over-the-counter pain reliever require prescription. Even caffeine killed
two people in 2003, a number equal to the two fatalities attributed to
non-iron vitamin/mineral supplements. Tea, coffee and cola soft drinks are
not sold with restriction, prescription, or in childproof bottles, and
rather few would maintain that they need to be.

A CLOSER LOOK AT ALLEGATIONS OF VITAMIN FATALITIES

Nutritional supplements are exceptionally safe. In 2003, there were no
deaths from multiple vitamins without iron. There were no deaths from amino
acids. There were no deaths from B-complex vitamin supplements. There were
no deaths from niacin. There were no deaths from vitamin A. There were no
deaths from vitamin D. There were no deaths from vitamin E.

There was, supposedly, one alleged death from C and one alleged death from
B-6.

The accuracy of such attribution is questionable, as water-soluble vitamins
such as B-6 (pyridoxine) and vitamin C (ascorbate) have excellent safety
records stretching back for many decades. "Vitamin problem" allegations are
routinely overstated and unconfirmed. The latest (2003) Toxic Exposures
Surveillance System report indicates that reported deaths are "probably or
undoubtedly related to the exposure," a clear admission of uncertainty in
the reporting. (p 340)

Even if true, such events are aberrations. For example, In 1998, the
American Association of Poison Control Centers' Toxic Exposure Surveillance
System reported no fatalities from either vitamin C or from B-6. In fact,
that year there were no vitamin fatalities whatsoever. For decades I have
asked my readers, colleagues, and students to provide me with any and all
scientific evidence of a confirmed death from either of these two vitamins,
or from any other vitamin. I have seen none to date.

HERBAL SUPPLEMENTS

The 2003 Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers Toxic
Exposures Surveillance System

(pdf file here)

indicates a total of 13 deaths attributed to herbal preparations. Three of
these are from ephedra, two from yohimbe, and two from ma-huang. I have
worked extensively in the alternative health field for nearly 30 years, and
I have known of virtually no one who has taken ephedra, yohimbe, or
ma-huang, and certainly not in the deliberately abusive high quantities that
it takes to kill someone. Nevertheless, accepting all seven deaths
attributed to these products, we still find that there were 30 times as many
deaths from aspirin and acetaminophen.

Only three deaths are attributable to other "single ingredient botanicals,"
and oddly enough, their identity remains unnamed in the Toxic Exposures
report.

Millions of persons take herbal remedies, and have done so for generations.
Indigenous and Westernized peoples alike have found them to be safe and
effective, and the 2003 Report of the American Association of Poison Control
Centers Toxic Exposures Surveillance System confirms this (p 388-389). There
have been no deaths at all from "cultural medicines," including ayurvedic,
Asian, Hispanic, and in fact, from all others.

Additionally, we find:

Blue cohosh: 0 deaths

Ginko biloba: 0 deaths

Echinacea: 0 deaths

Ginseng: 0 deaths

Kava kava: 0 deaths

St John's wort: 0 deaths

Valerian: 0 deaths

Furthermore, there have been no deaths from phytoestrogens, glandulars,
blue-green algae, or homeopathic remedies.

MINERAL SUPPLEMENTS

Of the eight deaths in the category, five of them are from non-supplement
sources rightly termed "electrolytes": two from sodium and three from
potassium (p 389). Two deaths were allegedly due to iron overdose. Since
1986, there has been an average of two deaths per year "associated with"
iron supplements. The sole remaining death was from calcium, a mineral that
is employed medically for its antidote properties. In fact, in 2003, calcium
was used as a lifesaving antidote in 5,228 cases (p 344). There is no
evidence that the single listed calcium death was from a supplement, and the
odds are overwhelming that it was not.

AMINO ACID SUPPLEMENTS

In 2003, poison control centers reported no deaths whatsoever from amino
acids. This is in itself a strong safety statement.

IN PERSPECTIVE

Supplementation's harshest critics have traditionally railed against
vitamins (especially in large doses) as being outright "dangerous" and at
the very least "a waste of money." Yet nutritional supplements are very
safe, and for much of the population, very necessary . . . To illustrate how
extraordinarily important supplements are to persons with a questionable
diet, consider this: Children who eat hot dogs once a week double their risk
of a brain tumor. Kids eating more than twelve hot dogs a month (that's
barely three hot dogs a week) have nearly ten times the risk of leukemia as
children who ate none. (Peters JM, Preston-Martin S, London SJ, Bowman JD,
Buckley JD, Thomas DC. Processed meats and risk of childhood leukemia.
Cancer Causes Control. 1994 Mar; 5(2):195-202.)

However, hot-dog eating children taking supplemental vitamins were shown to
have a reduced risk of cancer. (Sarasua S, Savitz DA. Cured and broiled meat
consumption in relation to childhood cancer. Cancer Causes Control. 1994
Mar; 5(2):141-8.)

It is curious that, while theorizing many "potential" dangers of vitamins,
the media often choose to ignore the very real cancer-prevention benefits of
supplementation . . . Media supplement-scare-stories notwithstanding, taking
supplements is not the problem; it is a solution. Malnutrition is the
problem.

The number one side effect of vitamins is failure to take enough of them.
Vitamins are extraordinarily safe substances. Drugs are not. There are over
106,000 deaths from pharmaceutical drugs each year in the USA, even when
prescribed correctly and taken as prescribed. (Lucian Leape, Error in
medicine. Journal of the American Medical Association, 1994, 272:23, p 1851.
Also: Leape LL. Institute of Medicine medical error figures are not
exaggerated. JAMA. 2000 Jul 5;284(1):95-7.)

Public supplementation should be encouraged, not discouraged. Supplements
are a cost-effective means of preventing and ameliorating illness.
Supplement safety is outstandingly high. Natural health products should be
classified as foods, not drugs.




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