John Oliver wants you to know most medical devices aren't tested on humans before market

John Oliver has some warnings about medical devices — (Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Last Week Tonight)

"The medical device industry is huge," with a market worth about $156 billion in the U.S. and at least one device inside 32 million Americans, John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. "That's right — all these years we've been waiting anxiously for the robot apocalypse, and it turns out, the robot apocalypse was inside us the whole time." But those personal injury lawyers on TV aren't wrong — medical devices do malfunction, Oliver said, pointing to one study that linked medical devices to up to 80,000 deaths and 1.7 million injuries in the last decade alone.

Many doctors don't even know this, but many medical devices aren't tested in humans before being put on the market, Oliver said. "So tonight let's talk about how medical devices get approved." He warned that there would be two "gross" clips and said he would warn people beforehand by flashing the word "Opossum" on the screen (though don't count on it). Oliver explained the big difference between "FDA Approved" and "FDA Cleared" devices, then ran through some examples of medical devices that caused horrible problems and the manufacturers who made them.

"I guess the big question here is, how can you know if a device is potentially harmful?" Oliver said. "And unfortunately, good information is actually very difficult to find." He suggested patients do what research they can and ask questions like whether there is an alternative, if the device can be removed, and how long it has been on the market. Oliver's segment had been relatively clean up to this point, but then 30 Rock's Jane Krakowski came on with a useful but profanity-filled summary of the problems with the medical device industry and what you can do about it. Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.