Semmelweis Redux

Dr. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis is a hero who saved the lives of countless mothers. He was an Austrian pediatrician practicing in Vienna around 1850. He discovered that simply by having physicians wash their hands they could stop the spread of infections that produced fatal fevers (childbed fever). For his insight, he was ridiculed and hounded from the medical community and died in oblivion.

Infection remains an enormous problem in healthcare, accounting for an “estimated 1.7 million infections and 99,000 associated deaths each year” in America alone. To reduce catheter-related infections, doctors from Johns Hopkins tested a simple procedure that included having clinicians wash their hands. There was a “dramatic decrease in catheter-related infections”, all the way to zero! Despite the obvious improvement, the inaptly-named Office of Human Research Protection (OHRP), a proud part of the US guberment's Department of Health and Human Services, decided that the procedure had not been properly reviewed and stopped the test.

Ah, the wonders of modern medicine, layering bureaucratic blundering atop simple age-old stupidity! With the attention of the New England Journal of Medicine making things uncomfortable, administrators at OHRP will learn anew the benefit of washing their hands of this mess.