Number of physicians in the US: 700,000.
Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year:
120,000.
Accidental deaths per physician: 0.171
U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services)

Number of gun owners in the US: 80,000,000.
Number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age
groups): 1,500.
Accidental deaths per gun owner: 0.0000188

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

"FACT: Not everyone has a gun, but everyone has at
least one Doctor."

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

(As a Public Health Measure, I have withheld the
statistic on Lawyers for fear that the shock could
cause people to seek medical aid.)

I don't have the link to this story, but I'm sure that a search of CNN will turn it up somewhere.
======================================================

CNN.com - JAMA: Don't believe everything you read - June 4, 2002

JAMA: Don't believe everything you read
June 4, 2002 Posted: 7:00 PM EDT (2300 GMT)

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- One of the world's leading medical journals has
put itself and its competitors under the microscope with research showing
that published studies are sometimes misleading and frequently fail to
mention weaknesses.
Some problems can be traced to biases and conflicts of interest among peer
reviewers, who are outside scientists tapped by journal editors to help
decide whether a research paper should be published, according to several
articles in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Other problems originate in news releases some journals prepare to call
attention to what they believe are newsworthy studies. The releases do not
routinely mention study limitations or industry funding and may exaggerate
the importance of findings, according to one JAMA study.
Wednesday's JAMA, devoted entirely to such issues, "is our attempt to
police ourselves, to question ourselves and to look at better ways to make
sure that we're honest and straightforward and maintain the integrity of
the journals," said Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA's editor.
The articles "underscore that the findings presented in the press and
medical journals are not always facts or as certain as they seem," said
Rob Logan, director of the Science Journalism Center at the University of
Missouri-Columbia.
DeAngelis said problems are most likely to occur in research funded by
drug companies, which have a vested interest in findings that make their
products look good.
Journal editors are concerned that manufacturers sometimes unduly
influence how researchers report study results, and even suppress
unfavorable findings.
Many top journals require researchers to disclose any ties to drug
companies, and Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor of the New England Journal of
Medicine, said editors rely on researchers to be truthful.
"I imagine that from time to time we screw up" and fail to adequately
mention drug company ties, but that is infrequent, Drazen said.
Favoring favorable statistics
One JAMA report found that medical journal studies on new treatments often
use only the most favorable statistic in reporting results, said author
Dr. Jim Nuovo of the University of California at Davis.
His study reviewed 359 studies published between 1989 and 1998 in JAMA,
The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, the British Medical
Journal and Annals of Internal Medicine. Only 26 studies reported
straightforward statistics that clearly assessed the effect on patients.
Most reported only the "relative risk reduction" linked to a specific
treatment, which is the percentage difference between drug-treated
patients and those in a placebo group. That figure is more misleading than
the "absolute risk reduction," which
measures the actual difference between the treatment results compared with
the placebo group, Nuovo said.

-- continued --

For example, if 5.1 percent of placebo-treated patients had heart attacks
compared with 3.7 percent of drug patients, the absolute risk reduction in
the drug group would be 1.4 percent. But researchers could use the
relative risk reduction to claim that the
drug lowers the risk of a heart attack 27 percent -- which sounds a lot
more impressive.
In another report, researchers from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in
White River Junction, Vermont, examined 127 news releases from seven
journals: JAMA, The Lancet, Pediatrics, BMJ, Journal of the National
Cancer Institute, Circulation and Annals of Internal Medicine. Few noted
study limitations or drug company funding, said the authors, Drs. Steven
Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz.
Releases were generally prepared by press officers, and the authors said
better editorial oversight could improve the process.
In a third JAMA report, Dr. Richard Horton, The Lancet's editor, analyzed
10 research articles published in his journal in 2000 and found that some
authors appeared to have censored critical comments from their co-authors.
Disagreements among authors about a study's conclusions occurred
frequently but often were not mentioned in the articles, he said.
Reforming the peer review process could address some problems, said Fiona
Godlee of BioMed Central, an online medical journal publisher that asks
peer reviewers to identify themselves in their reports.
Most print medical journals allow peer reviewers to remain anonymous. In
another JAMA report, Godlee said requiring open review would make
reviewers more accountable and might reveal any conflicts of interest.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

(c) 2002 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.
An AOL Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.

Warlord,  Lighten up dude.  :)  It was not meant as a serious example of a "correct" study.  I just thought a few of you would get a kick out of this "funny" that I got in an email.  I was thinking that you might want to turn things around on the anti-gun nut out there that started spouting crap from a biased study or a bs analysis of the results of a good study.  Just some more ammo to counter the warped logic of the next asshole at your office that starts raving about taking guns away from US citizens.  I used this on a Brit friend of mine that is about as liberal as they come and it had him stammering for a defendible arguement.