Letters to the Editor
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CDC methodology
I do not know the details of the CDC's methodology. I believe them to be a trustworthy source. If you have informed methodological criticisms of the CDC data-gathering technique, do share.
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BFD
@LWM
1. The GMU econ department is home to two Nobel laureates and a lot of very bright people. I imagine that intelligent people can read the paper and judge for themselves.
There are now two instances where two people have shared a Nobel prize for holding contradictory positions. The first was in economics when Myrdal and Hayek shared one. Hayek has been proven wrong, btw.
There was a similar case in neuroscience, Golgi and Cajal.
A Nobel prize doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.
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IOW
Your pathetic appeal to authority is a meaningless fallacy.
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Textbook case of irrationality
No matter what you quote, if you think that doctors and hospitals kill more people than they save, you are wrong.
Strong opinions unattached to significant knowledge coupled with a refusal to accept contrary data ("no matter what you quote, you are wrong") composes a pretty good definition of the usual garden-variety political irrationality. Take a look at the data.
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It is "irrational" to deny SaintLucid's obvious bias.
George Mason University is a Virginia-based University, situated close to Washington, D.C. It is notable for hosting over 40 right-wing research centers and affiliates including the Institute for Humane Studies and the Mercatus Center.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_Mason_University
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@saintlucid
I do not know the details of the CDC's methodology. I believe them to be a trustworthy source. If you have informed methodological criticisms of the CDC data-gathering technique, do share.
I wasn't criticizing the CDC methodology or conclusions. I was criticizing your inferences made from them. I did share my informed criticism of your inferences.
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Just Out Of Curiosity, How Many People Do Hospitals and Doctors "Save"?
Just out of curiosity, on the claim that hospitals and doctors kill more than they save, what is the standardized population set used to represent the people that "they save"?
How many people do hospitals and doctors "save"? Do they kill more people, for example, than visit doctors and hospitals and do not die during the visit? That would seem to be unlikely. It seems that more people were at my local hospital the last time I went than died that day in my city.
Many statisticians and epidemiologists, as well as economists, would have some difficulty coming up with a number of how many have been "saved" by doctors and hospitals. Is it many? Is it restricted to those who were dying upon entry but then did not die? Those who have died and been revived? Victims of serious accidents who did not die?
This is a number I look forward to discovering. How many people do "hospitals and doctors...save"?
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Bucky is Tom Cruise
saintlucid is katie holmes.
You are out to lunch, baby.
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How many people do guns save?
This is a number I look forward to discovering. How many people do "hospitals and doctors...save"?
-- El Cid
There are no efforts to track that statistic. Surely there are cases where guns used in self-defense have saved lives. Healthy people don't usually go to the hospital unless to visit. It should come as no surprise to anyone that people die in hospitals. The best quick measure of this would be to look at how many people die during a visit to the doctor. A rather low number I would guess, .00001% maybe?
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Damned inferences
The CDC reports that 90,000 people are killed annual by hospital infections and 47,000 by kidney failure. I infer that 90,000 is more than 47,000.
Further, I note that several studies suggest that spending on healthcare does not strongly correspond to lifespan. That is, the extra health-care spending that the U.S. does above and beyond Japan or France seems to be, at best, a wash, and possibly detrimental. Given that the additional attention does not seem to have substantial value but does expose patients to medical errors, hospital infections, etc. — significant threats — I infer that our national medical habits may do more harm than good at the margins.
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Truer words were never spoken
If anything, the New Century study confirms my basic observation: spending more on healthcare may kill you.
-- saintlucid
By Mona: "Far left and right meet up in the fever swamps of bigotry and conspiracy theories, and both are unpatriotic."
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Scientific Inquiry On Whether Guns Or Doctors Save More People
Well, we could look for areas of the planet in which there are no hospitals and doctors, but there are guns, and see how healthy everyone in that area is. But then we'd have to define how big an "area" is, for example, in my house there are no hospitals or doctors but there may be guns, so that wouldn't prove anything.
Probably you'd want a sample population of not just statistical significance, but large enough where it seemed to represent some entire population or subset of a population.
Or we could try the laboratory version in which we destroy a nation's medical infrastructure but allow weapons depots to be plundered and dismiss the nation's armed forces until an insurgency arises. Iraq, for example.
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@ Mona
[Arne]: I was asking about the "means"? Should the argument about the enforcement "means" be different for the two cases? If so, why?
Truly I'm not trying to be difficult, but I don't understand your question, If you are speeding, you get pulled over and given a ticket. That is not how fraud is pursued. What "means" distinction are you trying to get at?
Here's the original colloquy:
[Mona]: I think laetrile sellers should be required to advertise that the AMA, FDA & etc., see no validity to their claims. But after that, it is up to the individual.
[Arne]: Then you agree with the problem, but not on the mechanisms of a 'solution'. How about putting up "speed limit" recommendations (you know, like those little yellow signs that everyone ignores)? (yes, I know that speed limit violations potentially hurt others, but seeing as we're talking means of enforcement of what the gummint thinks is 'good behaviour'....)
You agree that selling laetrile to rubes (assuming arguendo that it's snake-oil) is bad, and that it is the gummint's duty to discourage if not prevent it.
The question is by what means (and with what level of compulsion.
Prosecuting "fraud" after-the-fact (or worse yet, leaving it to a civil tort case after the harm has been done) would be like slapping criminal penalties and/or civil liability on speeders after they've caused some harm. Prosecuting them (or threatening prosecution) beforehand for unsafe (or unsavoury) behaviour, through speeding tickets or through prosecutions and fines for selling bad product, up front has the salutary effect of more effective prevention than ex post facto liability (particularly since speeders don't think they'll crash and snake-oil sellers may actually believe they're selling good sh*te.
[Arne]: Back to my question: "Think it works?" Does it "work" in a meaningful sense?
[Arne]: And who should be paying for the research? Should the quacks be getting a "free ride"? Should they be allowed to overwhelm the gummint if given a "free ride" with so many "new" products as to make the gummint unable to keep up (as seems to be the case for the latest twists on diet and "manly vigour" crapola judging on telly ads....)?
Well, you can't prove they are quacks, can you, unless someone has researched it and shown the claimed cure or whatever is not efficacious. But you can require them to point out -- and really Arne, I haven't reflected on font styles and size! -- that there is no FDA approval for X.
Why not? The way it currently works for drugs is that the manufacturers have to do the research to prove safety and efficacy first (food "supplements" avoid this by the convenient "fiction" that "foods" can't be poisonous and by avoiding any specific medical claims to efficacy for their product [thus "Bob" and his "manly vigour"]). What's wrong with this?
As for font size, there were plenty of arguments as to both wording and conspicuousness of the "Surgeon General's warnings" .... with the industries of course looking for any ways to make sure the fewest people saw it; kind of tells you where they were coming from. I have to admit that the warnings I've seen in other countries with less of a "free speech"/"laissez faire" tradition are quite ... ummmm ... interesting. Graphic pictures of malignant lung cancer in lungs blackened with tar.....
Cheers,