Comment by pona-a
13 days ago
Does your hospital kill more people than it saves? If so, you might be describing the 19th century Vienna General Hospital, which had two maternal wards: one staffed by trained physicians, suffering up to 30% mortality, the other by midwives, only experiencing 2~10% rates. The difference was so pronounced, local women desperately avoided the first ward, begging to give birth in the streets rather than be admitted there. Ignaz Semmelweis later attributed the disparity to doctors having performed autopsies before attending births without disinfecting their clothes, hands, or tools, dropping to only a few percent with disinfection.
Or if you limit your demographics, perhaps you might be thinking of the Tuskegee syphilis study, where treatment was intentionally withheld for a progressive, life-threatening disease without the consent of the patients, making its purpose to slowly kill the participants by its own admission?
Yes, if your hospital does seem to kill more people than most and there's no alternative explanation like accepting more severe cases, then its purpose might be inverse or orthogonal to its stated goal.
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