Cancer and heat disease are numbers 1 and 2. IAN GILLESPIE, from the London Free Press tells us a Canadian Medical Association Journal published a U. of Toronto study that looked at data from 20 hospitals in five provinces involving more than 3,700 patients.

* As many as 23,750 patients die each year due to “adverse events” (defined by researchers as “unintended injuries or complications resulting in death or prolonged hospital stay that arise from health care management.”) * About one in every 13 patients admitted to acute- care hospitals in Canada during fiscal year 2000 experienced one or more adverse events. * About 37 per cent of these errors were highly preventable.” in other words human error.

So more than 8,700 people die in this country from human error. This is not just a Canadian problem. A report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) cites two studies showing that between 44,000 and 98,000 hospitalized Americans die each year due to medical mistakes.

Why is there no public outcry about this? Do we expect that a certain number of us will die from preventable medical errors and just not worry about it? If you worked in an industry that killed 8700 people each year from your preventable errors, do you think your industry would continually get away with it year after year? Why does the public continue to accept this status quo?

I’m not saying that people in other jobs don’t make mistakes, I do, we all do. But when most other people make mistakes, people don’t die. We need institutional and individual reform to change this.

This is just the number of deaths. What about other medical mistakes that lead to side effects that aren’t fatal but still are damaging?

How often have you got a prescription from your doctor that you can’t read? Why don’t we either makes them print legibly or make them print it out on a computer? Should I risk death or further sickness so you aren’t inconvenienced?