Wrong. Cancer and HD are new in the toll they take on people. If you think about it a bit, you will see why this is. C and HD are read as a % of the cause of death. They are now the leading cause of death. The average life span in 1900 in NA was only 2 years less than now. But C and HD are now the leading cause of death. Why? Even if the death of the youth by cholera, flu, SIDS infection child bed fever etc, was bring the averages life span down, would these then be the leading causes of death? Would it not be that the vast majority would still live a longer time and still be brought down by the same diseases as today, allowing the leading death causes to still in 1900 be C and HD? In other words lets lay it out. For a five year difference in the average age of death how many 0 to 10 year olds have to die of say bacterial illness? X +5 + 70-70X = 65. that means less about 7 % of the pop dies of bacterial illness to drop the death age to 65 from 70. If we get drastic and go to 50 let's say, then we get almost 30% of the very young had to die from bacterial illness at an average age of 5 in order for the average age of death to get that low.
Let's go to many dying up to the age of 30 by bacteria, and the average age of death being 60. The rest, once they reach 30 are hardy enough to reach 70 as in the above. Sound fair?
Well crunch it. 15X+70-70X=60 = 10/55 have to die of bacterial illness and say war, 18% of non HD and non Cancer. But what does that leave? 72% have to die of something else. So what is the erosion of the big 2, HD, Cancer, ? From what to what? Do you think it would get much lower than 28 and 22 percent that it is now? The least the averages of these two disease groups would get is to 20 percent and 15 percent respectively but HD would still be the number one killer and C would be in the top 3.
But we are not even talking that. In 1900 people lived to an average age of 70, not 60, so it is clear that if the ratios were the same, HD and C would still be the leading cause of death, but are you ready for this... they WERE NOT! So what does that mean? It means that we should be living a LOT longer except we are getting cut short by Cancer and HD, and NOT dying of the older-era diseases. So it is the other way around from what you thot!!! If we were not getting Cancer we would also not be getting the older era disease either, so our average age of death would be around 85, like is in Crete, Greenland amongst eskimo who eat traditional diet, and in Okinawa.
benbest.com
The reasons for this are complex, and may seem to contradict what I said earliers, but lung infection and then HD were the leading killers. Cancer was 10% of the rate of those two combined. Now cancer has TRIPLED in rate, and we no longer die of TB and pneumonia at early age at the same rate. The complication is that pneumonia was and still is a frequent killer of the old with compromised hearts who get the flu late in life, and it is either listed as HD, or natural lung infection, a complication of flu, so does not get put under the same banner as it used to be.
But this still does not so easily explain the horrendous increase in Cancer rates. It would be easy to say, well, Cancer kills old people, and they would be dead of TB in an earlier age, but that is not true. I admit that the rate of deaths by TB in 1900 is the same as the Cancer death rate is today. But I submit this is specious. Penumonia has dropped drastically too in death rate, by the invention of penicillin and other drugs. Why is not Cancer then much much higher? Why is it not 6 times higher today if it is purely mathematical that it has to kill you if something else does not... this for instance is NOT true in Asia!! And futher this is no reason why people who did not die of Cancer in 1900, but got TB and Pneumonia, would not have died by the remaining diseases in exactly the same proportion as were evident in that day if they avoide TB and Pneumonia completely.. and the answer is one Cancer to six from heart disease, but today it is 2 C to 3 HD .. is it math or causation?
There is no arbiter that says a Cancer sufferer who dies today had to die of TB if he had been born 100 years earlier. One of the reasons is that half the Cancer cases occur in younger people, so at least half the TB cases shuld have been Cancer instead in an earlier age all other things being equal. The question to ask is, why cancer? Why not something else? Is it inevitable? Assuming that it is inevitable and the only other thing to die of is the logical error to jump to from the seemingly attractive option given by pure math. Cancer may not be a mere operational statistic it may have a preventable cause.
Another factor to note is that Cancer and HD are lifestyle illnesses in part that may be alleviated by behaviour modification, i.e. avoiding carcinogens and better diet and exercise. Today's diet, exercise and exposure to industrial toxins and smoke is worse in many ways than it was 100 years ago.
What is causing the decrease in death by HD that is seen in the stats below? Well, the answer is medication, surgery and enforced dietary and lifestyle changes that doctors now prescribe.
infoplease.com
Let's ignore drugs and doctors, which some say by misprescription are the leading cause of all death in the USA.. statistically -- no kidding..
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