Friday, February 24, 2006

Something seems to be wrong with my hammer...

... the wood just doesn't seem to cut evenly when I saw.

Why Doctors So Often Get It Wrong (NYT, 22 Feb 06, by DAVID LEONHARDT)

With all the tools available to modern medicine — the blood tests and M.R.I.'s and endoscopes — you might think that misdiagnosis has become a rare thing. But you would be wrong. Studies of autopsies have shown that doctors seriously misdiagnose fatal illnesses about 20 percent of the time. So millions of patients are being treated for the wrong disease. As shocking as that is, the more astonishing fact may be that the rate has not really changed since the 1930's.

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