Regarding the Oct. 20 editorial, "Reviewing medical treatment": I find the opposition to bills requiring certain bodies, such as the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine, to submit reports to investigative commissions to be highly suspicious. If doctors are innocent of medical malpractice, why should they fear a criminal investigation?
The premise that "medical specialists would become so busy conducting autopsies for the purpose of responding to the demands of investigations that they would not have enough time to treat patients" is based on the dubious premise that there would actually be a high demand for investigative autopsies.
The Caesarean case mentioned sounds suspicious enough. According to the editorial, a placenta is firmly attached to the uterus in about one of every 10,000 cases. Here I was under the illusion that the placenta attaches to the uterus in 100 percent of pregnancies. The argument in court seemed to center on whether the doctor should have removed the uterus instead of trying to separate it from the placenta.
What do the medical records say about the need for a C-section? Was it really needed, or was this one of those induced operations in which the doctor wanted the baby out ahead of schedule -- and perhaps too soon for the placenta to detach from the uterus? Nobody would know without a proper investigation.
An investigation not only would vindicate as well as incriminate doctors, but also cast scrutiny on a standard medical procedure that may be out of date, thus decreasing the propensity for medical accidents and deaths. Preventing the recurrence of medical accidents is precisely what the bills proposed by the Democratic Party of Japan are for.
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