Ben Carson’s Long History Of Medical Malpractice Will Shock You

[leftofcool]

Not sure about all of this. Occupy Democrats has this story among others reporting on the same thing.

http://www.occupydemocrats.com/ben-carsons-long-history-of-medical-malpractice-will-shock-you/



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3264044/Ben-Carson-sued-malpractice-six-times-including-girl-suffered-facial-disfigurement-woman-claimed-left-SPONGE-skull.html

[Faux pas]

1. Snake oil

is what comes to my mind whenever I hear him speak.

[GGJohn]

2. Only sued 6 times?

That's a remarkably low number of lawsuits considering the field of practice he was in.
All accounts have him as a brilliant and talented pediatric neurosurgeon.

This is a stupid thing to attack him on, attack his politics, which are abhorrent, but not his being a talented Dr.

[COLGATE4]

3. This 'article' is the functional equivalent of Swiftboating

and we Democrats shouldn't be engaging in it. As a poster on another, similar thread put it so well, if Carson were a Democrat the Rethugs would already be howling about 'malpracticeGate', 'lawsuits', 'Congressional investigation', etc. But what marks the difference between us is that Democrats don't buy into Swiftboating, regardless of how much we dislike the potential target. And we shouldn't do it here either.

As to the actual charge in this trite little piece, many DU'ers have already commented on the fact that 6 malpractice suits in 30 years of practice for a neurosurgeon is a figure so small as to be almost laughable. Neurosurgery is a field where even the best outcomes of surgery are often far less than perfect. I would have expected far more suits for 30 years of practice and I am personally amazed at how good Carson must really be - as a surgeon - to have achieved such a low percentage of unfavorable outcomes.

This however has nothing to do with how I feel about Carson the candidate. As a Rethug candidate, I despise him. As a medical professional I rebuke him for giving in to the easy dollar and promoting huckster products claiming to 'cure cancer' and similar. As a person I find him to be incredibly arrogant and condescending, as well as mentally slow and disorganized. But I won't stoop to accusing him of medical malpractice simply to have a stick to beat him with.

[WillowTree]

4. Six malpractice suits in 30 years of practice hardly constitutes a "long history".

And if you read the articles, not all of those have even been settled. I'd almost say it's "shocking" that the number isn't appreciably more than that.

Can you swear with a straight face that you haven't made 6 mistakes in the last 30 years?

This it the wrong, wrong, wrong area in which to challenge this mans qualifications to be President.

[NV Whino]

5. If you read the article...

You will see that Johns Hopkins pays its doctors malpractice fees. That means, according to the article, that his actions may have resulted in more cases where he was involved, but he was only specifically named in six, two of which are still pending.

[truebluegreen]

6. Whatever his record regarding malpractice,

he still makes me question the purported intelligence required of brain surgeons.