With his last chapter, author of, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science, Atul Gawande states that uncertainty fills the medical field, as even the best doctors in the world have to face situations in which they are unable to provide answers. He describes the case of the death of eight newborns who had the same mother. At the time, doctors thought it was a common newborn syndrome called SIDS but it was later recognized by a detective, who reopened the case, that the mom in fact had murdered almost all of the children. Because the doctors were unable to definitively determine that the mother did not actually smoother her children, it was not until 1999 that she was held accountable Later, Gawande tells of a time that a patient
