"Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance."
Let me quote some fun facts from a book published in 1996, most of which, surprisingly, is still applicable today.
- Women are found to be given hysterectomies without their consent. - Pregnant women abort perfectly healthy babies after the foetus is wrongly diagnosed as being defective. - Some 1,000 cervical smear tests are misdiagnosed. - In some hospital district, nearly 2,000 patients are misdiagnosed as having cancer and given treatment that may increase their chances of developing the disease. - New evidence emerges about hormones containing Creutzfeld-Jacob disease in fertility treatments given to women. Growth hormone was also found to be contaminated with CJD. - Surgical patients are dying from bad care in hospital. - Half of all trainee doctors admit to major mistakes in giving intravenous drugs. - Drug prescriptions have gone up by 30 per cent in seven years. - 13,000 British lives are lost a year because intensive-care patients aren't monitored properly - In a recent study, medics were reported not being 'particularly worried' even when patients had levels indicating that they were seriously deprived of oxygen and needed immediate attention if they were to live. - The 'sphygmomanometer', or the black blood-pressure cuff all doctors seem to have are inaccurate in measuring blood pressure, especially when one's blood pressure can vary by as much as 30 mm Hg over the course of a day. - The stethoscope in the hands of trained heart specialists result in misinterpreted readings every one out of four times. - The computers used to interpret ECG readings are no better, with an accuracy of 2 out of 3.
