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Medical Error Is Not the Third Leading Cause of Death
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item type
article on a website
author
Jonathan Jarry
link
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-health/medical-err [snip!]
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journal
www.mcgill.ca
year
2021
month
August 31
excerpt
- A popular claim that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States originated in a 2016 back-of-the-envelope analysis published in the British Medical Journal
- This ranking is an exaggeration that was arrived at by combining a small number of studies done in populations that were not meant to be representative of the entire U.S. population and that were not designed to prove a link between a medical error and death
- The claim is often used by proponents of alternative medicine to scare people away from medical care.

Related Content
This item is about:
“Medical error-the third leading cause of death in the US,” Makary et al, British Medical Journal, 2016.
One article on PainScience.com cites this item as a source: