Terrorism We Can Believe In?

What would you think and feel if you were told that an organized group within the United States killed 424,000 Americans each year, and maimed millions more?

Is it al Queda, Inc. or Taliban LLC, or Right Wing Hate, Corp. we are talking about here?

The real haters of America would jump and shout for "joy" to be able to kill 424,000 of their enemy would they not?

A Dredd Blog article several months ago reported this shocking detail:

The article points out that deaths due to "iatrogenic causes" during hospital care results in 225,000 deaths per year in the United States.

The outpatient care which follows that hospitalization results in an additional 199,000 deaths due to those "iatrogenic causes".

The not so grand total is 424,000 deaths per year that were due to negligence, accidents, or incompetence.

An "iatrogenic cause" is defined as:

i·at·ro·gen·ic: Induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially of an infection or other complication of treatment.

(Dictionary). What this boils down to is that, in the health care system discussed, the treatment is sometimes worse than the disease.

(Dredd on JAMA, cf. Med. Detective). In plain english, iatrogenic means "doctors bury their mistakes" which number into the hundreds of thousands, while we spend trillions of dollars chasing people who only kill a tiny number by comparison.