Medical mistakes are occurring with alarming frequency in this country. Nightly newscasts and daily newspapers tell of botched surgeries, mistaken patient identities, careless overdoses, and neglected diagnoses. You may have dismissed these stories as unfortunate mistakes, misunderstandings, or just isolated incidents with the occasional bad doctor. Wall of Silence reveals that these medical mistakes are not rare incidents. In fact, the real-life stories in this book show that medical mistakes increasing in frequency-and worse, that the system is designed more to cover up these errors than prevent them. With searing outrage and heartfelt compassion for the victims of medical mistakes, Gibson and Singh put human faces to the tragic numbers we read and hear about. Within these pages, you'll meet: · An eight-year-old girl whose cries of pain from kidney cancer were dismissed by doctors, eventually leading to her permanent paralysis · A rising young star in the federal government whose elective surgery has left him in unrelenting excruciating pain and unable to continue his promising career · A retired store manager whose botched colonoscopy resulted in a raging infection that nearly killed him · A widower whose wife died from a cancer that was spotted four years before her death-but never treated Wall of Silence goes behind the scenes to expose how medical mistakes plague the entire health care system, including: · How the "old-boy network" of physicians works to keep irresponsible doctors practicing on-and harming-unsuspecting patients · How the tribal culture of hospital hierarchy among nurses, doctors, and technicians fosters dangerous-and sometimes fatal-miscommunication about individual patients' treatment · How sleep-deprived doctors-in-training, who routinely work 95 -hour weeks, endanger the lives of patients under their supervision Hospitals, insurance companies, HMOs, state medical boards, and medical associations also come under fire for turning a deaf ear to the claims of innocent victims and their families. Gibson and Singh shed light on the intimidation and other punishing tactics these bodies use to maintain the Wall of Silence. Wall of Silence is required reading for everyone who uses the health care system in America.