> Most surgeons are mindless robots. So immersed in their craft, full of themselves and disconnected from the rest of the population that they don't pause to think too much about what they are doing.

This is an extraordinary assertion. Having watched my two elderly parents getting excellent -almost loving - care from surgeons on the NHS, I find it quite an offensive one. In both cases they sat down and spent quite a lot of time going through the pros and cons of surgery at at their advanced age. Dad decided to go ahead with a particularly ticklish piece of back surgery which gave him another 7 years of mobility and independence, even though it wasn’t fully successful.

I’m sorry that you had such an appalling experience. It’s not universal.

The stats you ask for are freely available in the NHS. The surgeon carried out the procedure on dad, knowing full well that it could quite possibly worsen his mortality figures.