>People guffaw over this stuff without realizing how dangerous it can be, or shrug over negligent errors that would cost lives if a physician did it. Except that this did cost lives and the luminaries shrug off the incompetence by claiming the result is the same... a bizarre counter to "the operation was a success but the patient died" thinking. ;-)

People do die of their mistakes. Perhaps starvation isn't as dramatic, but suicides are.