DOCTORS:

(A)  The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B)  Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year are 120,000.
(C)  Accidental deaths per physician are 0.171.
Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services.

GUNS:

(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. Yes, that is 80 million.
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.000188.

Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than guns.

Remember, "Guns don't kill people, doctors do."

Fact:  NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.

Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand.

Out of concern for the public at large, the statistics on lawyers have been withheld, fearing that the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention.

IBTTWL
(In Before The Thin WHITE Line)

dizzupe fo shizzle


old but funny

Though this has been posted hundreds of times here, I'm never able to stomach how absurd such a comparison it is. It doesn't make gun-laws look lame, it makes the person making the comparison look lame.

First of all, comparing # of doctors to # of gun-owners is apples and oranges. It SHOULD be the # of people who visit doctors each year, not the # of doctors. That would at least be a little bit closer to a relevant comparison. And then the statement "NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR" just contradicts everything before it and underscores the lameassness of this whole comparison - you should be comparing the # of people who have a doctor to the # of people who have a firearm!

Secondly, accidental firearm-deaths is under 800/year. It'd be nice if even the basic facts were correct.

Sorry but because this gets posted at least once every month or two, I've just grown weary of seeing such lameness pass by over and over.

this periodically reappears.. of course, I always wonder what "accidental" means particularly in the case of physicians... it seems to me that most mistakes that cost patients their lives are a comedy of errors...not necessarily attributable to a single physician.
I also wonder about whether those numbers are outdated, given the perennial reappearance of this little analysis.

I would note that guns generally don't kill people accidentally on their own making the act of seeing a physician a riskier one that owning a gun in terms of accidental death. On the other hand, the omission of the intentional killings with firearms is glaring.

While this is an interesting little blurb that I have passed along, I would be careful about trying to use this as a foundation for an argument because it's far too easy to undermine the argument since so much is missing.

Lastly, I will admit that I avoid doctors like the plague despite the fact that a number of close family members are nurses and surgeons. I hate hospitals even more...almost like a pre-morgue... no thanks.

Quoted: Though this has been posted hundreds of times here, I'm never able to stomach how absurd such a comparison it is. It doesn't make gun-laws look lame, it makes the person making the comparison look lame. First of all, comparing # of doctors to # of gun-owners is apples and oranges. It SHOULD be the # of people who visit doctors each year, not the # of doctors. That would at least be a little bit closer to a relevant comparison. And then the statement "NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR" just contradicts everything before it and underscores the lameassness of this whole comparison - you should be comparing the # of people who have a doctor to the # of people who have a firearm! Secondly, accidental firearm-deaths is under 800/year. It'd be nice if even the basic facts were correct. Sorry but because this gets posted at least once every month or two, I've just grown weary of seeing such lameness pass by over and over.

I had the exact same reaction as you - this post irritates me enromously (not you, Donna, but the content).

The numbers are so ridiculously off, it is pathetic.  The notion that 120,000 accidental deaths are caused by physicians each year is totally harebrained.

For example, here are the causes of death for 2001:
- Heart Disease: 696,947
- Cancer: 557,271
- Stroke: 162,672
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,816
- Accidents (unintentional injuries): 106,742
- Diabetes: 73,249
- Influenza/Pneumonia: 65,681
- Alzheimer's disease: 58,866
- Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 40,974
- Septicemia: 33,865
(note when they say "accidents" they mean car crashes, falls, etc - not medical malpractice)

I find it completely unbelievable that doctor negligence would make up such a large proportion. - although certainly some negligence deaths are undoubtedly "hidden" within these numbers.

I also can find no states on the Health and Human Services webpage - which would be strange anyway, since it's the NCHS or CDC that would most likely keep such statistics.  So I'm willing to conclude that the numbers are COMPLETELY MADE UP.  


It also is the worst analogy ever - since people VOLUNTARILY go see the doctor, but rarely voluntarily get shot.  As such, if people worry about this, they can CHOOSE to not see a doctor, but cannot choose not to get shot.

Quoted: Though this has been posted hundreds of times here, I'm never able to stomach how absurd such a comparison it is. It doesn't make gun-laws look lame, it makes the person making the comparison look lame.

Beat me to it... I'm glad to see your post... I was a little afraid I was gonna get shredded and tagged a "liberal" again.

Quoted: The numbers are so ridiculously off, it is pathetic.  The notion that 120,000 accidental deaths are caused by physicians each year is totally harebrained.

The stats vary by study. Here are two -

Hospital Admissions/Year = approx. 33,600,000 (1997)
Total Number of Hospital Deaths/yr Due to Medical Error:
* 44,000-98,000 deaths due to errors. (0.13%-0.29% fatal error rate) Institute of Medicine Report
* 5,000-15,000 deaths due to errors (0.014%-0.045% fatal error rate) AMA News

Quoted: Quoted: The numbers are so ridiculously off, it is pathetic.  The notion that 120,000 accidental deaths are caused by physicians each year is totally harebrained. The stats vary by study. Here are two - Hospital Admissions/Year = approx. 33,600,000 (1997) Total Number of Hospital Deaths/yr Due to Medical Error: * 44,000-98,000 deaths due to errors. (0.13%-0.29% fatal error rate) Institute of Medicine Report * 5,000-15,000 deaths due to errors (0.014%-0.045% fatal error rate) AMA News

Thanks for finding that - your internet kung fu is much stronger than mine.

Wow - that's an amazing difference.  But I guess the definition of "error" can be somewhat squishy, and as someone else pointed out "hospital errors" can be all sorts of things unrelated to physicians.  

Quoted: Though this has been posted hundreds of times here, I'm never able to stomach how absurd such a comparison it is. It doesn't make gun-laws look lame, it makes the person making the comparison look lame. First of all, comparing # of doctors to # of gun-owners is apples and oranges. It SHOULD be the # of people who visit doctors each year, not the # of doctors. That would at least be a little bit closer to a relevant comparison. And then the statement "NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR" just contradicts everything before it and underscores the lameassness of this whole comparison - you should be comparing the # of people who have a doctor to the # of people who have a firearm! Secondly, accidental firearm-deaths is under 800/year. It'd be nice if even the basic facts were correct. Sorry but because this gets posted at least once every month or two, I've just grown weary of seeing such lameness pass by over and over.

Nice analysis. The other thing not mentioned is hours with the actual weapon or doctor.  If there were as many hours of intereaction with firearms as with the numbers of hours with a doctor and a patient, there would be more of a comparision. But you are correct, the comparison is absurd and just demonstrates the ignorance of the poster to any real scientific fact or statistics.

Quoted: Wow - that's an amazing difference.  But I guess the definition of "error" can be somewhat squishy, and as someone else pointed out "hospital errors" can be all sorts of things unrelated to physicians.

Yep. Nearly every study I've ever come across refer to "Medical Errors" rather than "Physician errors".

As you implied, "medical errors" could include mistakes by lab workers, nurses, LPNs, and any number of various technicians like imaging specialists, radiologists, surgical techs, etc.

Again, this is not a flame against Donna - this same stuff gets posted so often here by so many folks I just had to call it at least once.

No offense intended.

Youre getting soft in your old age.

Okay, so it's not a flame against ME, but in my defense, I did a search to see if it had been posted before... and didn't come up with anything. [sigh] Also, I'm still somewhat of a

Quoted: Okay, so it's not a flame against ME, but in my defense, I did a search to see if it had been posted before... and didn't come up with anything. [sigh] Also, I'm still somewhat of a

No problem.

This same post seems to come up about every couple months under different titles.

When was it that someone died of old age?  Maybe the 60s?  50s?  Like the cable guy said, "She was 104 years old!"    (or something like that)

Heeheee!

Quoted: Though this has been posted hundreds of times here, I'm never able to stomach how absurd such a comparison it is. It doesn't make gun-laws look lame, it makes the person making the comparison look lame. First of all, comparing # of doctors to # of gun-owners is apples and oranges. It SHOULD be the # of people who visit doctors each year, not the # of doctors. That would at least be a little bit closer to a relevant comparison. And then the statement "NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR" just contradicts everything before it and underscores the lameassness of this whole comparison - you should be comparing the # of people who have a doctor to the # of people who have a firearm! Secondly, accidental firearm-deaths is under 800/year. It'd be nice if even the basic facts were correct. Sorry but because this gets posted at least once every month or two, I've just grown weary of seeing such lameness pass by over and over.

You sir, are a buzzkill

Quoted: Quoted: Though this has been posted hundreds of times here, I'm never able to stomach how absurd such a comparison it is. It doesn't make gun-laws look lame, it makes the person making the comparison look lame. First of all, comparing # of doctors to # of gun-owners is apples and oranges. It SHOULD be the # of people who visit doctors each year, not the # of doctors. That would at least be a little bit closer to a relevant comparison. And then the statement "NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR" just contradicts everything before it and underscores the lameassness of this whole comparison - you should be comparing the # of people who have a doctor to the # of people who have a firearm! Secondly, accidental firearm-deaths is under 800/year. It'd be nice if even the basic facts were correct. Sorry but because this gets posted at least once every month or two, I've just grown weary of seeing such lameness pass by over and over. You sir, are a buzzkill

Some people just don't get it!!

MEDICAL STORE CLERK:
Thank you for your purchase of the Heart Monitor, Doctor.  Come back after the "10 day cooling off period" and background check.

CAR SALESMAN:
Thank you for your purchase of the 2005 Ford SUV.   Come back after the "10 day cooling off period" and background check.

SEX STORE CLERK:
Thank you for your purchase of the French tickler.  Come back after the "10 day cooling off period" and background check.

HOME DEPOT CLERK:
Thank you for your purchase of tools.  Come back after the "10 day cooling off period" and background check.

STATIONARY STORE CLERK:
Thank you Mr. Attorney for your purchase of legal pads.  Come back after the "10 day cooling off period" and background check.  (This one is especially dangerous and shoul probably have a 20 day wait instead.)

Guns can kill people, and so can Doctors too.  

But having said that, Guns can save people, and doctors can too. Ave.