Life expectancy on the decline in parts of U.S.

[Newsjock]

Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer

For the first time since the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, life expectancy for a significant proportion of the United States is on the decline largely due to an increase in chronic diseases related to obesity, smoking and high blood pressure.

While life expectancy for all other western nations and for most of the U.S. has continue to improve over the past several decades, researchers at Harvard University and the University of Washington say many of the worst-off here are getting much worse.

One of every five American women, and one of every 25 men, are either dying at a younger age or seeing no improvement in lifespan. While this deadly trend is mostly centered in the southern parts of the nation, several largely rural counties in Washington -- Cowlitz, Lewis, Benton and Grays Harbor -- are also on the verge of seeing a decline in overall lifespan.

"It is what you would expect to see in a developing country, not here," said Dr. Majid Ezzati, a Harvard professor and lead author of a study published in the open-access journal Public Library of Science Medicine.

Read more: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/359985_dyingsooner22.html

[rucky]

1. The Bush plan to save Medicaid & Soc. Security

is working

[Infinite Hope]

2. Well, that trend will save Social Security. The population was getting too large anyway.

:sarcasm:

[maddezmom]

3. just posted the same in the Health forum

sad stats :(

[gratuitous]

4. At least we ain't got socialist medicine!

Gas prices at an all time high, life expectancy going down, and George and Dick still running free.

[onehandle]

5. Life Expectancy Drops for Some U.S. Women (Result of Smoking and Obesity)

Source: Washington Post

Historic Reversal, Found in 1,000 Counties, May Be Result of Smoking and Obesity. For the first time since the Spanish influenza of 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women.

In nearly 1,000 counties that together are home to about 12 percent of the nation's women, life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s, according to a study published today.

The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural and low-income areas. The most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women's life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.

The trend appears to be driven by increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It reflects the long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, and the slowing of the historic decline in heart disease deaths.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/21/AR2008042102406.html

---

My 77 year old mother had 20% of her left lung removed yesterday. Not due to lung cancer (not 100% ruled out though). It was caused by an infection due to pneumonia. Although she had stopped smoking decades earlier, the doctor found signs that her habit was a contributing factor to the the cascading complications that she has experienced in the last two weeks. She's now unconscious and on a respirator.

The doctor will not deliver a prognosis for a couple of days or so.

[asthmaticeog]

6. You've come a long way, baby.

</obligatory>

[Vinca]

7. I suppose it has nothing to do with lacking healthcare.

:sarcasm: I'm nothing like the article depiction, but I nearly died the year after I had to give up my health insurance because I couldn't afford it. I should have been admitted to the hospital at the time, but upon hearing I was uninsured, the doctor sent me home to my bed after taking a couple of blood tests to be sure I wouldn't immediately drop dead and make him liable. Fortunately, I recovered - but it was just luck. While I'm sure obesity and smoking play a role, those conditions, too, can be treated if you have healthcare.

[raccoon]

11. Thank you! I was thinking the same thing. nt

[qanda]

8. Some doctor on the Today Show said we are now the richest Third World nation

I have no doubt that a lack of basic healthcare for many poor is a contributing factor in these statistics.

My best to you and your mother. I hope that she recovers.

[eridani]

9. Old study, can't find a URL, but--

--smoking is far more damaging to women because of smaller lungs. At the time, the life expectancies were ranked
1. Non-smoking women
2. Non-smoking men
3. Smoking men
4. Smoking women

Did they see a trend in inner cities? Black women are far more likely to have AIDS, but smoking rates among black people are significantly lower.

[flashl]

10. Deaths, flu, epidemic, and 'The 1918 virus' interlaced threads surfaces often lately in health news

There were early warnings.

WORLD YAWNS AT U.S. SYNTHESIS OF DEADLY 1918 FLU VIRUS
Dec 2005 / Jan 2006 Issue

Shortly after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta announced the reconstitution of the Spanish influenza virus, which killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19, U.S. analysts publicized a number of security-related concerns arising from this development.

The CDC results were published in a paper entitled, “Characterization of the Reconstructed 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic Virus,” in the October 7 issue of Science. <1> This publication was the culmination of more than a decade of effort by scientists at the CDC, the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (Bethesda, MD), the Department of Agriculture, and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (New York, NY) to determine the complete DNA sequence of the extinct Spanish flu virus, fragments of which were extracted from preserved tissue samples of pandemic victims.

...

The CDC offered a strong defense of its decision to reconstitute the 1918 flu virus. On its website, the agency stated, “While there are concerns that this approach could potentially be misused for purposes of bioterrorism, there are also clear and significant potential benefits of sharing this information with the scientific community: namely, facilitating the development of effective interventions, thereby strengthening public health and national security."<5>

Also read:

The Sunshine Project - News Release - 5 October 2005

Disease by Design: 1918 "Spanish" Flu Resurrection Creates Major Safety and Security Risks

The resurrection of 1918 influenza has plunged the world closer to a flu pandemic and to a biodefense race scarcely separable from an offensive one, according to the Sunshine Project, a biological weapons watchdog.

"There was no compelling reason to recreate 1918 flu and plenty of good reasons not to. Instead of a dead bug, now there are live 1918 flu types in several places, with more such strains sure to come in more places," says Sunshine Project Director Edward Hammond, "The US government has done a great misdeed by endorsing and encouraging the deliberate creation of extremely dangerous new viruses. The 1918 experiments will be replicated and adapted, and the ability to perform them will proliferate, meaning that the possibility of man-made disaster, either accidental or deliberate, has risen for the entire world."

The 1918 experiments are part of the US biodefense program and are of no practical value in responding to outbreaks of "bird flu" (H5N1). The 1918 virus is a different type (H1N1) of influenza than "bird flu". 1918 flu is more than eighty five years old and no longer exists in nature, posing no natural threat. While it is reasonable to determine the genetic sequence of 1918 and other extinct influenza strains, there is no valid reason to recreate the virulent virus, as the risks far outweigh the benefits.

But the most significant story isn't Tumpey, Taubenberger, and colleagues. It is the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) attitude about the experiments and its implications. "The biggest news about resurrecting 1918 flu is the US government's enthusiastic embrace of designer disease and the impact that it will have on our future." says Hammond, "By encouraging genetic riffs on influenza and other viruses with the explicit intent of building more dangerous pathogens, CDC is fueling the gathering dangers of competition to discover the worst possibilities of biotechnology applied to bioweapons agents. Some might do it just to keep up with the Americans, resulting in a further blurring of defense and offense and heightening the biological mistrust evident in US foreign policy."

[bemildred]

12. An increase in the infant mortality rate will have that effect. nt

[LynnTheDem]

13. "It is what you would expect to see in a developing country..."

And a fast-declining one.

THANK GEORGE W. bUSH!

[Overseas]

14. It is expected when medical care is a for-profit industry

Push snacks and joke about boring vegetables and make sure consumers know that they deserve sweets. Snack and drive your cars and snack and golly why is there an obesity problem and snack and have some fries and a milkshake and some chips and some soda and then you will have more consumers for your prescription drugs but they are a special new group of consumers we call patients. Gotta have more sick people. Be sure that all the chemicals in our daily lives are evaluated separately-- then we can call them safe. Don't measure how they interact-- just process more and more food to make it more convenient and cram more chemicals into our skincare products. Then you've got a great toxic soup that could lead to all kinds of conditions that we can prescribe a whole bunch of new pills for and then we can make pills to counteract the side effects of the other pills. Medical care is an exciting profit center-- we can build new patients while they're having fun eating all the cool stuff we advertise. Heck, we even convinced them to use aluminum byproducts in their toothpaste to prevent decay and slather aluminum on their armpits to stop that nasty sweat-- aluminum toxicity is still under debate, so we can keep it up. And hey, if people like sugar and hate fiber, let them have it-- that's freedom, man ! And it builds the consumer base for the multi-billion dollar "health care" industry.

[Quantess]

21. Our culture encourages unhealthy habits, such as sloth and gluttony.

People don't know how to live healthy. And lack of health care isn't helping a bit. In fact, the doctors are being influenced by pharmaceutical companies to overprescribe medications.

About aluminum- there are deodorants, such as Tom's of Maine, that don't contain aluminum. I, too avoid aluminum antiperspirants.

[CanSocDem]

24. Yes, that pretty much sums it up...(eom)

[area51]

15. What do people expect ...

... in a country where healthcare isn't a basic human right. This is part of the evidence that we are a third-world country, not a first-world country. None of the candidates are pushing single-payer, which would save thousands of lives per year.

[maxsolomon]

16. obesity

rural counties have the least access to decent food (other than that which they grow or hunt themselves). fresh food is there, but in much smaller proportion to the processed corn syrup crap.

[daleo]

17. This happened in the old Soviet Union too

It is a symptom of decline of empire.

[slackmaster]

18. You've come a long way, baby!

To get where you've got to, today!
You've got your own cigarette, now baby,
You've come a long long way!

[Liberal_in_LA]

19. Bump! This is such an important story.

[ckramer]

20. Cuban live longer than us

go figure

[Igel]

22. The study itself is online.

Original sources are usually better than a reporter's take on the original paper. Esp. when the reporter links to the paper.

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050066&ct=1

There are two parts: Paper and editor's comments. The paper itself is long, with the editor's comments following a summary. The summary concludes:

"Life expectancy decline in both sexes was caused by increased mortality from lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, and a range of other noncommunicable diseases, which were no longer compensated for by the decline in cardiovascular mortality. Higher HIV/AIDS and homicide deaths also contributed substantially to life expectancy decline for men, but not for women."

The editor's comments provide context: "Between 1961 and 1983 the death rate fell in both men and women, largely due to reductions in deaths from cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke). During this same period, 1961–1983, the differences in death rates among/across different counties fell. However, beginning in the early 1980s the differences in death rates among/across different counties began to increase. The worst-off counties no longer experienced a fall in death rates, and in a substantial number of counties, mortality actually increased, especially for women, a shift that the researchers call “the reversal of fortunes.” This stagnation in the worst-off counties was primarily caused by a slowdown or halt in the reduction of deaths from cardiovascular disease coupled with a moderate rise in a number of other diseases, such as lung cancer, chronic lung disease, and diabetes, in both men and women, and a rise in HIV/AIDS and homicide in men."

There's more of interest.

It's worth noting that the relative lack of health care didn't interfere with a slow increase in longevity (even though the increase was far less than in more privileged counties) for years. They had little health care, and any reduction in health care isn't blamed by the investigators; note that the cut-off year is 2001. However, the long-term effect is swamped recently by diseases that are often lifestyle-related: lung disease, diabetes, AIDS, and homicide. In some communities you could restore the lost gains by eliminating smoking, obesity, unsafe sexual practices, sharing needles, or homicide. Most of these things are preventable not by doing things, but by *not* doing things.

[arundhatiroyfan]

23. I'm certain other parts of the world will follow. n/t

People getting more stressed out everywhere.