Everyone knows that when you die from lung cancer the death is a factor of smoking.

Do not know the rate of autopsies in the USA.

http://www.forces.org/writers/hatton/files/lies.htm

A joint report by the Royal Colleges of Pathologists Surgeons and Physicians ("The Autopsy and Audit", 1991), says: "In autopsies (post-mortems) performed on patients thought to have died of malignant disease (cancer) there was only 75% agreement that malignancy was the cause of the death and in only 56% was the primary site identified correctly." (So if you are told you have cancer there is a one in four chance that you haven't, and even if you have there is almost a fifty-fifty chance that you're being treated for one in the wrong place).

"So,even if they had death certificates showing smoking caused lung cancer deaths,only about 40% of deaths would be correct diagnoses."-gkayser

The report ended: "Such high levels of discordance mean that mortality statistics which are not supported by autopsy examinations must be viewed with caution." The rate of post-mortems in England and Wales is 27%.

The risk of misdiagnosis is heightened by the fact that it has been found that there are 38% of un-detected lung cancers in non-smokers, 20% in moderate smokers, and only 10% in heavy smokers.

A survey in Hungary, which has a very high rate of postmortems, showed that even when they'd cut you up pathologists couldn't be dead sure of what had killed you in almost 20% of the cases.

Professor Alvan Feinstein, of Yale, a world authority on epidemiology (the study of the causes of disease), has said firmly that death certificates are merely "passports to burial", and for more than 50 years, every time someone has studied the causes of death listed on the death certificates, the conclusion has been that the information is 'grossly inaccurate and unreliable".

This message has been edited. Last edited by: gkayser30,

http://www.medicinenet.com/autopsy/page3.htm


Why is the autopsy rate declining?
Beginning in the 1950s, hospital autopsy rates started falling from an average of around 50% of all deaths to 10% in the late 1990s. Currently, the rates are even lower at non-academic hospitals. In 1970, the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Hospitals dropped the requirement that a hospital needed an autopsy rate of 20% to be accredited. To some, this decline represents a crisis in medical education, research, and practice, and deprives decedents' families, physicians, and society of the many benefits of an autopsy.

Many individuals in medicine feel that modern technology has made the autopsy outdated or obsolete. With modern imaging studies and laboratory tests, it is thought that the autopsy is unlikely to reveal any conditions that were not detected clinically. The accuracy of the clinical diagnosis has been the subject of numerous research studies. These studies have consistently shown that in 20% to 40% of autopsied patients, there were important, treatable conditions that were detected at autopsy that were not diagnosed clinically. This consistent and significant discrepancy between clinical and pathologic diagnoses is probably the most compelling argument for continued efforts to revive the autopsy.