Iatroepidemics: a probe to examine systematic preventable errors in (chest) medicine.

Iatroepidemics are extreme examples of the inadequacies and errors that are prevalent in medicine. Their causes and evaluation are useful in demonstrating that medicine has a potentially destructive side as well as a highly constructive one. In the 1960s, the ATS left the sanitoria and joined the mainstream of medicine. In the 1980s it has become apparent that formal connections with science are not enough to ensure maximal safety for our patients. Nor are these connections sufficient to ensure maximal effectiveness of the measures we use to treat patients. A new awareness of our collective responsibility for improved patient outcome would be the obvious first step. Translating this sense of responsibility into new organizational approaches could place the ATS at the forefront of providing needed, and perhaps inevitable, reforms of medicine generally.