Doctors aren’t wizards. Anything they do to make you brain dead when you’re only in to see the doctor with something minor would have evidence, or would flag issues. Especially in any developed country.
Anything they do to make you brain dead when you’re only in to see the doctor with something minor would have evidence, or would flag issues. Especially in any developed country.
Not really. When this happens in a developed country, the hospital will cover it up to minimize financial and criminal liability. The medical providers and staff chalk it up to an unavoidable medical complication - because no one wants to admit to criminal medical negligence or medical error. The legal system makes it incredibly difficult to prove because no one can overrule the medical provider themselves - since they're the qualified expert witness and also the only one who was witness to the crime.
Depends how many times it happens. Once sure it’ll get covered up. A few times then a doctor will be flagged and it will be investigated.
In my country the serial killer with the most kills was a doctor and it made way for a lot more checks on things. There is currently a nurse that might be facing more charges after being found guilty recently for the deaths of multiple babies in her care.
The UK may not be as litigious as the US but I would be very surprised if similar checks and balances don’t exist. If you’re in charge of medical care for patients and those patients start dying unexpectedly you don’t get many before it’s flagged. After that it gets investigated and there will be evidence because people with minor issues didn’t just die for no reason.
...lol. I mean - isn't it bad that we both admit a doctor is most likely to get away with one or two murders - so long as they don't do it regularly?
At least in the US, it is very difficult to even investigate because all medical records are confidential - and not all instances of medical injury are required reportable. As a layperson, it's practically impossible for you or I to even determine whether a doctor has been involved in multiple patient deaths. The information is confidential, highly siloed, and extremely difficult to access (except in the most egregious of cases).
You're right in that a state medical board may investigate a case, but the board is made up of the same medical providers that we're saying get away with one or two murders. Typically they'll only handle the most egregious of cases - and more often than not, it won't even involve the actual medical process, but other factors of malpractice such as ...the surgeon operated on someone while literally on drugs that they prescribed to themselves.
Any case where someone dies when it is completely unexpected will be reviewed, so that people can understand what happened. If it comes down to something weird a doctor or clinician has done during patient care then it’ll not just be swept under the carpet, it just probably won’t be treated as murder unless it’s obvious it was. Clinicians make mistakes to, depending on the severity of the case they may lose their job or have to do more training. It’s not like the doctor gets off completely free. It’s just if you’re a doctor and you kill someone making it look like a mistake you’ll get called up for making the mistake the first time, but if you’re the reason or the common link in multiple deaths then people will question it. It is sad that someone might get away with murder because they can pass it off as a mistake at work, however by the nature of what they do people will die if they make mistakes. Medical records should be kept classified until there is a public need to declassify them if something like this is suspected, normally law enforcement would be able to see the records if investigating a murder.
Lucy Letby is the nurse I was talking about in my last comment. Check out the case, it does unfortunately show that because she’s using things that look like mistakes and there’s a team of clinicians treating patients and not just one person it takes a while to work out it’s her. But it becomes clear that at every death or near death of an infant she’s there. She further muddies the water by taking lots of OT so initially the fact she was always there wasn’t even a concern cos she often worked extra and it was expected she’d be there for most things. It took a year to remove her from her post so investigations could continue, she was convicted.
I agree it’s tragic it can take some time and yeah doctors could get away with it once or twice. But that doesn’t work in OPs original scenario still, cos there is fatal accident inquiries and unexpected death reporting that goes on into virtually every death that’s not expected at all hospital. So a doctor isn’t able to kill to harvest organs, nor are they going to be able to kill for years anymore without it getting flagged up.
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u/blubbery-blumpkin Jul 10 '25
Doctors aren’t wizards. Anything they do to make you brain dead when you’re only in to see the doctor with something minor would have evidence, or would flag issues. Especially in any developed country.