[charlesism]

My reasoning is that it's probably easier to harm someone by botching an operation, or by administering an overdose, then it is by their not having the surgery at all, or skipping medication. Not that either case is ideal, of course!

No doubt doctors and nurses are overworked. It occurs to me that our culture may set the bar too low on when to intervene. Things seem to go wrong more often than we like to acknowledge.

Heck, just sleeping a few nights in a hospital, without any treatment, already exposes a human to unhealthy hospital food, infectious disease, and a small, but non-zero, risk of a nurse mistakenly pumping you full of insulin.