A Hundred Thousand Dead Because of Carelessness

Link: A Hundred Thousand Dead Because of Carelessness.

Accidental hospital infection, aside from diabetes or Alzheimer's     * kills more Americans than alcoholism,     * knocks off almost twice as many as car crashes,     * amounts to three times the number of suicides,     * five times the homicide rate,     * three times all deaths by firearms and     * five and a half times as many deaths as are attributed to illegal drug use. Yet we mandate seatbelts in cars by federal law, worry ourselves sick over firearms and spend $18 billion annually (about a million dollars a death) on the War on Drugs. We expect to be at risk if we’re seriously overweight. Cancer might be fatal. Everyone knows that standing under a lone tree during a thunderstorm is dangerous. Walking the edge of a highway at night, wearing dark clothes isn’t a good idea and those who drive drunk have little to complain about when they hit a tree or, worse yet, another car. But who expects to go into the hospital with a simple fracture or a tonsillectomy and come out dead? We’ve named the killer. He does not stalk the halls unknown and shrouded in mystery. Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) comes to us mostly courtesy of lazy pediatricians and demanding parents. “Give the kid an antibiotic,” the siren-call of overuse that lead to the Darwinian development of drug-resistant strains. In the sixty years since penicillin and other ‘cillins’ commonly used against infection, various bacteria were busy counting the dead and restructuring the survivors. If that sounds like a battle-plan, it’s not too much of a stretch.