Is it true, doctors are third leading cause of death, after heart-attack and cancer in USA.?

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Yes, it's true, but the number is a little off. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/07/30/doctors-death-part-one.aspx says it should be 225,000 (between unneccessary surgeries, medication errors in the hospital, other errors in the hospitals, etc).
It specifies:
"ALL THESE ARE DEATHS PER YEAR:
* 12,000 -- unnecessary surgery
* 7,000 -- medication errors in hospitals
* 20,000 -- other errors in hospitals
* 80,000 -- infections in hospitals
* 106,000 -- non-error, negative effects of drugs
These total to 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes!!"

SkepDoc, the JAMA is the source. The same article above lists http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10904513&dopt=Abstract (an abstract from July 26, 2000;284(4):483-5). But you are right that it has nothing to do with Alternative Medicine except to encourage people to look for healthier options and preventative measures instead of letting things degrade to the point where they have to go to the hospital where one of these "errors" could occur. I hope this helps!


[edit]: The article also mentions the 44,000 to 98,000 deaths as a result of medical errors... that's included in the numbers above that I listed. It's not lies at all and it's fully verified by the AMA and JAMA (although they may list it in different ways so you sometimes have to read closer). It also points out that the U.S. is an average of 12th (out of 13) on a list for 16 available health indicators... the article as a whole is an interesting read that is cited so I'd read through the whole thing....Show more

Wow. That's like Republican math there.

Even if 100,000 people per year died from medical errors (that is all sources, not just doctors), you fail to account for the hundreds of thousands of people, every year, who are saved by caring, intelligent, competent, sometimes brilliant doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals doing their jobs correctly.

Go back and recalculate now....Show more

No, that's a lie. One very easy to reveal.

As pointed out, the source is a JAMA article. However in reality it says 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of medical errors.

The people who can easily check their claim are those with institutional access to journals (JAMA is not open access), usually doctors and scientists. These are also the least likely people to believe their tripe. The general public simply cannot check the validity of their claim, so they get away lying about it.

In reality far more people than that would have die in the absence of an evidence based medical system. This is trivial to show. Look at any undeveloped nation.

It gets worse for them though. The entire point of the article was to show the US medical system is inferior to other industrialized nations that happen to use the same evidence based "allopathic" medicine.

So, they are lying about the number, what it means, and what the alternative is. Alternative "medicine" pushers are dishonest charlatans.

Assuming the high estimate, medical mistakes are the 6th cause of death, lower than accidents and above diabetes. The low estimate puts them at 10th, below kidney problems and above sepsis....Show more

Malpractice is not a cause of death per se.

Even if 250,000 people suffer from malpractice and die as a result annually, that doesn't mean that most of them would've lived if they had received the best care money can buy.

If a person has cancer, but his doctor misses it, and that person dies, did he die from malpractice, or did he die from cancer?
If the doctor had found out about his disease and put him on the best treatment possible, would he have made it?

These questions are impossible to answer with a statistical study, so statements like "doctors are third leading cause of death" will forever remain unproven.

One thing is certain: 250,000 people suffering from deadly diseases and getting crappy treatment annually is unacceptable, even if you can't neatly place it on the "leading causes of death" table....Show more

No, these deaths can be also be attributed to the medical system as well, hospital staff mistakes etc, and misuse of pharmaceuticals.

You fail to mention the hundreds of millions of lives that are improved or saved each year thanks to doctors and pharmaceuticals, so your question is misleading, and is not evidence for the efficacy of any alt med, including your homeopathy, which saves zero lives....Show more