Lack of Autopsies Sets Back Knowledge, Buries Mistakes

received from W.C. Douglas and from the Health Sciences Institute:

Remember a prime-time TV show called Quincy from back in the late 1970s? It starred Jack Klugman, and was about a medical examiner who solved crimes using medical evidence obtained from autopsies of the victims. It was the original made-for-TV forensics show, the forgotten precursor of the ultra-successful CSI series that's all the rage these days. My point in mentioning this program is to focus your attention on a fundamental (and indispensable) tool of medicine that's rapidly going the way of the dinosaur: The autopsy.

Why should you be MORE aware of such an unpleasant thing as slicing up a corpse? Because autopsies are one of the most important ways in which doctors learn things about medicine and health — whether it be a green med student learning basic anatomy in medical school or a veteran medical examiner detecting the earliest warnings of a possible outbreak of a bacterial epidemic. In truth, without autopsies, we wouldn't be anywhere near as far along medically as we are today.

But where autopsies were once a matter of routine in the majority of deaths — especially those occurring outside the four walls of a hospital — nowadays they're the exception, not the rule. According to a New York Times report, it's likely that less than 5% of all deaths are followed by an autopsy in this day and age. That means an awful lot of assumptions are being made about what's causing the remaining 95% of people to die — and in many cases, they're DEAD WRONG…

Case in point: A recent "heart attack" victim (as determined by a coroner) was found to have actually died of BACTERIAL MENENGITIS, a severely contagious infection that could have spread to others before the man's death. Without the autopsy a curious forensic pathologist performed on the body, these potential victims might never have known they'd come into contact with a carrier of the disease — and could have started an epidemic, had one or more of them been infected! Luckily, they weren't.

Some doctors may argue that MRIs and other high-tech imaging technologies eliminate the need for formal autopsies in many cases. But that's an illusion, in my opinion — and research agrees with me. According to some studies, autopsies reveal missed or incorrect diagnoses in ONE OUT OF FOUR hospital deaths.

By now, you're probably asking: WHY aren't autopsies routinely performed anymore? Well, the sinister answer won't surprise you, if you've been a reader of mine for any length of time. Keep reading…


"Don't ask, don't tell" coroner's reporting

What's the biggest reason autopsies are rarely performed nowadays? Liability. You see, were autopsies routine, their findings would call into glaring relief the frequency of misdiagnoses (or mistreatment) on the part of hospitals and emergency medicine providers. In other words, they'd definitively expose the mistakes modern medicine makes which sometimes end up harming or killing us. What does skipping the autopsies really mean to hospitals?

Avoiding expensive malpractice lawsuits.

That's right — by forgoing autopsies in all but a select few cases, they're able to get away with sweeping their mistakes right under the rug. Once again, it's dollars versus sense in mainstream medicine! Don't the relatives of the deceased have the right to know exactly WHY their loved ones have died? And shouldn't hospitals be held accountable for those deaths in which they're truly culpable?

Don't get me wrong, here — I'm not for more lawsuits by any means. God knows there are already too many frivolous malpractice suits on the court dockets right now. I'm just saying that medical care for everyone will improve if hospitals are forced to contend with (and learn from) their diagnostic and treatment mistakes… So they won't repeat them on you or someone you love.

Dissecting the deception,

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.

“Physicians, of all men, are most happy: whatever good success soever they have, the world proclaimeth and what faults they commit, the earth covereth.”
- Francis Quarles
- Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man

"The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."
- Frank Lloyd Wright