What does "Iatrogenic" mean? Iatros means "physician" in Greek and -genic, means "induced by" - derived from the International Scientific Vocabulary. Thus, iatrogenic means "physician-induced". Medical definition: "induced by a physician's words or therapy (used especially of a complication resulting from treatment). Thus Iatrogenic death is death resulting directly or indirectly from a physician's words or therapy.

In 2000, a presidential task force labelled medical errors a "national problem of epidemic proportions." Members estimated that the "cost associated with these errors in lost income, disability, and health care costs is as much as $29 billion annually." In the same year the Journal of the American Medical Association carried a study by Dr. Barbara Starfield (John Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health) that put Iatrogenic deaths in America at the astounding number of 225,000! 

Dr. Starfield cautioned that as startling as this research was, it only represented hospitalized patients - it did not include deaths in nursing homes, emergency rooms, or in doctor’s offices. It did not include negative effects that are associated with disability or discomfort. And, these estimates of death due to error are lower than those in other published reports. Nevertheless, 225,000 iatrogenic deaths per year constitute the third leading cause of death in the United States, after deaths from cancer and heart disease! The most significant number of these unnecessary deaths, 106,000, were due to the negative effects of properly prescribed drugs, making them the fourth leading cause of death in America.

On a strictly monetary basis, depending on which published study you use, this adds up to $58.5 to $100 billion in extra costs! Walter Cronkite, well-known news anchor, painted a dismal picture: “America’s healthcare system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.”  (1990) 

No wonder some have also dubbed this 20th century disease Acquired Iatrogenic Death Syndrome (AIDS) 

 

Iatrogenic Death JAMA July 26, 2000;284(4):483-5
Unnecessary surgery	12,000
Drug errors in hospitals	7,000
Others errors in hospitals	20,000
Negative effects of properly prescribed drugs	106,000
TOTAL	225,000
Cost	$100 billion
Iatrogenic Death National Patient Safety Foundation Oct. 9, 1997
TOTAL	420,000
Cost	$200 billion

    

In 2003 a independent review of government-approved medicine (Death by Medicine - Authors: Gary Null PhD, Carolyn Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, Dorothy Smith PhD) compared thousands of published, peer-reviewed scientific studies.  The numbers generated were higher than those cited in the JAMA article, but the conclusion was the same: there is something dreadfully wrong with American medicine. Too often it does more harm than good. Compelling evidence from this study unveiled astounding statistics on the 783,936 iatrogenic deaths per year that have resulted from conventional medicine at the staggering cost of $282 billion. Depending on which of the above studies one finds more credible, it still adds up to between two and six jumbo jets falling out of the sky each and every day! This phenomena is not limited to the U.S. Similar percentages were seen in Britain, Canada, and Australia.

  Annual Physical and Economic Cost of Medical Intervention

Condition	Deaths	Cost	Author
Adverse Drug Reactions	106,000	$12 billion	Lazarou(1) Suh(2)
Medical error	98,000	$2 billion	IOM(3)
Bedsores	115,000	$55 billion	Xakellis(4) Barezak(5)
Infection	88,000	$5 billion	Weinstein(6) MMWR(7)
Malnutrition	108,800	-----	Nurses Coalition(8)
Outpatients	199,000	$77 billion	Starfield(9) Weingart(10)
Unnecessary Procedures	37,136	$122 billion	HCUP(11)
Surgery-related	32,000	$9 billion	AHRQ(12)
TOTAL	783,936	$282 billion