this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2024
11 points (92.3% liked)

Skeptic

1328 readers
84 users here now

A community for Scientific Skepticism:

Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism, sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence.

Do not confuse this with General Skepticism, Philosophical Skepticism, or Denialism.

Things we like:

Things we don't like:

Other communities of interest:

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." -David Hume

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
11
Medical Error Is Not the Third Leading Cause of Death (skeptoid.com)
submitted 4 months ago by TrojanHam to c/[email protected]
3 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 3 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

In 2022 (the last year for which final numbers are available as of this writing), the leading causes (in order) were heart disease (703,000), cancer (608,000), followed by accidents, COVID-19, stroke, lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer's, diabetes (at 101,000), and then the 98,000 number would rank only ninth.

Those are pretty general categories too. There's a lot of cancers and a lot of different sorts of heart disease. Not to mention an almost uncountable number of ways to die in an accident.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There are also a lot of different kinds of medical errors...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

True. I'm not sure if any category is really especially useful as a statistic. Am I more likely to die slipping in the bathtub than I am of eye cancer? That's quite likely even if neither kill me because I'm guessing a lot more people die slipping in the bathtub than of a rare form of cancer.