More than a thousand NHS patients in England in the past four years have suffered from serious mistakes that should never happen. These ‘never events’ included a man who had a testicle removed rather than just a cyst. A woman's fallopian tubes removed instead of her appendix. The wrong legs, eyes or knees were being operated on and there are hundreds of cases of foreign objects such as scalpels being left inside bodies after operations. Patients' lives were put in danger when feeding tubes were put into their lungs instead of their stomachs. Patients were given the wrong blood type during transfusions and others given wrong drugs or drug dosages. Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said, ‘It is a disgrace that such supposed 'never' incidents are still so prevalent. How are such basic, avoidable mistakes still happening? There is clearly a lack of learning in the NHS. It is unforgivable to operate on the wrong organ, such mistakes can never be rectified.’