Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies may well be America’s biggest health threat. From Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null at globalresearch.ca:
Over the past 50 years, the leading pharmaceutical companies in the United States have caused the injuries and deaths of millions of Americans. This troubling reality has reached such widespread acknowledgment that iatrogenic harm—injuries and deaths caused by medical treatment and erroneous diagnoses—now ranks as the third leading cause of death. There is growing consensus that our federal health agencies, which are meant to protect public health, have failed to address this crisis in any meaningful way. In fact, these agencies have often undermined efforts to confront the serious flaws in our healthcare system and in fact enable systemic corruption to thrive within the industry.
Studies over the years have consistently placed iatrogenic deaths as one of the leading causes of mortality with some analyses labeling it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. However, there is increasing evidence that the actual numbers may be significantly higher than what current estimates suggest, revealing a deep and pervasive crisis within the healthcare system.
The most frequently cited research on iatrogenic deaths comes from a Johns Hopkins study, which estimated that approximately 250,000 Americans die annually due to preventable medical errors. Published in BMJ in 2016, the study highlighted systemic issues such as misdiagnoses, medication errors, and inefficiencies in healthcare systems as major contributors to these deaths.
However, an even more alarming estimate comes from the British Medical Journal and places the figure at 400,000 deaths per year, arguing that the Johns Hopkins study failed to include broader systemic failures and unnecessary medical interventions. Both studies firmly position iatrogenic deaths as a leading cause of mortality, but neither captures the entirety of the problem.
