A doctor with advanced ovarian cancer writes in the New York Times about cancer misdiagnosis and responsibility. A 2013 study found that a majority of the 400 doctors believed that from zero to 10 percent of patients are misdiagnosed, but research indicates that the actual figure may be as high as 28 percent. Acknowledging that missed diagnoses make up a "considerable proportion" of malpractice claims and the availability of “lost chance” legal arguments, she outlines the obstacles to legal remedies:
But how many of us have the strength, or the money or expertise, to manipulate complex legal systems and take on the burden of proof in order to protest bungles that continue to exact their toll in suffering? And since patients make mistakes, too, we often concede that they arise less from irrevocable faults in our physicians, and more from the fallibility of medicine. “To err is human; to forgive, divine,” as the poet Alexander Pope put what has since become a platitude: mistakes happen.
