More people are dying these days than ever before. And that’s a good thing.
There was a news story from the BBC last week entitled “Cancer cases projected to rise 45% in next two decades”. The research by Cancer Research UK projected 23 different types of cancer and concluded that the “numbers of cancers in men and women are projected to increase by 55% and 35%, respectively”. The impact on the health sector in the UK is going to be profound. The UK has rapidly increasing health care costs, just like we do, and the costs of care for cancer are amongst the highest. Such a dramatic increase in the number of cancer cases is going to have an enormous impact on everyone. While the story was specific to the United Kingdom, I don’t think there’s any reason to suspect we’re very different.
I’m prepared to stick my head above the parapet and make a dangerous prediction. More people reading this will die of cancer than did in their parent’s generation. In fact I’ll go further. I predict that a larger number of people will die in the next century than died in the last one. Many more.
The first reason for this prediction of doom is simple. More people will die because more people will be alive. Whether we like it or not, everyone who is alive will, one day, be dead and a greater number of living people means that eventually there will be a greater number of deaths. That’s just a sign of progress.
The fact that there are more living people is a direct result of many influences including better health care, lower infant mortality and better education. Despite what certain “alternative” health product manufacturers with a vested interest in selling their bogus products will tell you, our diet these days is much better than it was in our grandparent’s time. Our food is more hygienically produced, more nutritious and even tastes better than it did in the past. Our health care systems, while still imperfect, are an immense improvement over what existed in the past. While “traditional” knowledge systems had something to offer us, the truth is that they are nothing compared with what a pharmacy can give you today. Better transportation means that doctors and nurses are more available to us than ever before, even in a country as large as ours and with a population as small and as widely distributed.
In Botswana even with the extra burden of HIV/AIDS our life expectancy is improving. Our nation’s life expectancy at birth, even including our brothers and sisters with HIV, is now double what it was a few years ago thanks to anti-retroviral drugs and PMTCT. Our population now apparently exceeds 2 million, up by almost a quarter in a decade.
So because of all these dramatic improvement more people are alive and as a result more will die.
The second reason for growing levels of cancer is due to that longer lifespan. As a result of living longer and of all this progress we’re now dying of different diseases and conditions that afflicted us in the past. We’ve completely eradicated diseases like smallpox and can prevent many other diseases like polio and influenza and consequently most of us are living through our youth and middle age into our elderly years when we’re susceptible to an entirely different set of diseases. Most of us are now dying of diseases of the elderly, not of the young.
Cancer is a good example. The vast majority of cancer victims develop cancer in their 50s or later. If people don’t survive until their 50s they’re not going to get cancer at all. All you have to do is increase life expectancy from 50 to 60 and you’ll see a massive increase in cancer rates. It’s the downside of living longer but you have to ask yourself something. Knowing that you’re certainly going to die one day, would you rather do it tomorrow or in 10 years? Or in 20 or 30 years time? The effect of scientific and medical progress is that you and I will hopefully live long enough to die of something our great grandparents had never even heard of. What better example can there be of progress?
Sources
The original BBC story can be seen here and the Cancer Research UK paper in the British Journal of Cancer it's based on is here. Cancer Research UK also provide historical data on levels of cancer over time and by age here.
Loads of fascinating data on life expectancy in Botswana can be seen here.
Showing posts with label life expectancy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life expectancy. Show all posts
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Weekend Post - Healthier than ever
A few months I was parking my car at my kid’s school. A young guy approached me as I left the car and asked if he could talk with me. I had a few minutes to spare and he seemed polite. I didn’t think he was going to mug me, I suspected he was trying to sell something.
He asked whether I was worried about my children’s diet. I told him that I wasn’t particularly worried which seemed to surprise him. I told him that I thought my kids have a fairly healthy diet. They probably get through a few too many chips but they’re just as likely to be found munching an apple. Ignoring this he started a lecture on the evils of “processed” and “convenience” food. His claim was that the chemicals, additives and junk in all this evil food was causing global ill-health and premature death. He suggested that if we eat organic, healthier food (and buy his pointless herbal concoctions) these problems would go away. He asked me why I think people lived longer in the past than they do now?
For a moment my brain stopped working and I stood there speechless. Was he serious? Did he really believe that in the past people were healthier than we are today?
He was, of course, comprehensively, completely and utterly wrong. We are the most fortunate group of people that has ever lived. No population is as lucky as we are today. No population in the history of the world has lived as long as we do or been as healthy.
Yes, I mean even in Botswana. I’m not just talking about places like Japan, Iceland and Australia where people seem to go on and on, I mean here too. Despite what we heard a few years ago, when the impact of HIV and AIDS was the centre of our attention, as a nation we have achieved a staggering amount.
Look at the facts. According to the figures, a baby born in Botswana in 2004 was expected to live, on average and if the mortality rate stayed the same as that in 2004 throughout his or her life, to the age of 31. Babies born now can be expected, if our much reduced mortality rate remains the same as it is now, almost to 60. And that’s the life expectancy at birth. If a kid survives the first few years of it’s life it can be expected to last a lot longer than 60.
Of course I’m not denying that HIV will continue to have an impact. However the success of anti-retroviral drugs is plain to see. We probably all know someone who we’ve seen close to the end but who is now thriving and enjoying life to the full because of the medication they’ve taking.
Perhaps my favourite statistic about the benefits of medicine involves our success with the Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission program. Normally a HIV+ pregnant mother has roughly a 40% risk of passing HIV to her child during childbirth. After PMTCT the risk dropped to lower than 4% and it’s dropped even further subsequently. Science and medicine did that.
So ARVs are extending the lifespan of our HIV+ siblings but what about diet? Wasn’t my car park friend right about the poisons and toxins in our food? No, he was wrong about that as well.
There is, sit down before you read this, no scientific evidence that food produced in traditional ways is any better for you than food produced using “artificial” fertilisers and pesticides. None whatsoever. In fact there is a lot of evidence that conventional fertilisers pose a very significant risk to human health. That’s not surprising when you think about it. Do you really want traces of raw cow poo on your fruit and vegetables?
There isn’t much evidence that the reverse is true either. Food produced using modern techniques is no better or worse for you than the traditional methods but one thing HAS changed massively. Food is now produced much more efficiently. The world’s population has almost reached 7 billion and we’re still producing food to feed everyone. Of course there are problems with getting it to the right people at the right time but that’s always been the case.
So here’s my suggestion for the week. Rather than pretending there was a distant age when things were better let’s look back and remember the massive proportion of children that never made it to their 5th birthday, the number of people who died of horrible diseases in their 20s and 30s and the endless sequence of famines. Let’s remember that in ancient Rome life expectancy was less than 30 and it didn’t get much better until the beginning of the 20th century.
Let’s also remember what helped us achieve all of. Science and medicine.
Sources
For a comparison of life expectancy data from around the world Wikipedia is a good starting point. It's also worth understanding what "life expectancy" actually means as well.
For details of Botswana's current life expectancy figures see here for data from the CIA World Factbook. Take a look also at the graph for death rate.
For a story on the impact of PMTCT see here.
A starting point for thinking about organic food is the Skeptoid podcast, in particular the episode on organic food here. This is where I found this piece from the American Council on Science and Health. Not worried about poo on your food? The US Food and Drug Administration are.
And that figure of 7 billion people? We'll get there later this month.
He asked whether I was worried about my children’s diet. I told him that I wasn’t particularly worried which seemed to surprise him. I told him that I thought my kids have a fairly healthy diet. They probably get through a few too many chips but they’re just as likely to be found munching an apple. Ignoring this he started a lecture on the evils of “processed” and “convenience” food. His claim was that the chemicals, additives and junk in all this evil food was causing global ill-health and premature death. He suggested that if we eat organic, healthier food (and buy his pointless herbal concoctions) these problems would go away. He asked me why I think people lived longer in the past than they do now?
For a moment my brain stopped working and I stood there speechless. Was he serious? Did he really believe that in the past people were healthier than we are today?
He was, of course, comprehensively, completely and utterly wrong. We are the most fortunate group of people that has ever lived. No population is as lucky as we are today. No population in the history of the world has lived as long as we do or been as healthy.
Yes, I mean even in Botswana. I’m not just talking about places like Japan, Iceland and Australia where people seem to go on and on, I mean here too. Despite what we heard a few years ago, when the impact of HIV and AIDS was the centre of our attention, as a nation we have achieved a staggering amount.
Look at the facts. According to the figures, a baby born in Botswana in 2004 was expected to live, on average and if the mortality rate stayed the same as that in 2004 throughout his or her life, to the age of 31. Babies born now can be expected, if our much reduced mortality rate remains the same as it is now, almost to 60. And that’s the life expectancy at birth. If a kid survives the first few years of it’s life it can be expected to last a lot longer than 60.
Of course I’m not denying that HIV will continue to have an impact. However the success of anti-retroviral drugs is plain to see. We probably all know someone who we’ve seen close to the end but who is now thriving and enjoying life to the full because of the medication they’ve taking.
Perhaps my favourite statistic about the benefits of medicine involves our success with the Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission program. Normally a HIV+ pregnant mother has roughly a 40% risk of passing HIV to her child during childbirth. After PMTCT the risk dropped to lower than 4% and it’s dropped even further subsequently. Science and medicine did that.
So ARVs are extending the lifespan of our HIV+ siblings but what about diet? Wasn’t my car park friend right about the poisons and toxins in our food? No, he was wrong about that as well.
There is, sit down before you read this, no scientific evidence that food produced in traditional ways is any better for you than food produced using “artificial” fertilisers and pesticides. None whatsoever. In fact there is a lot of evidence that conventional fertilisers pose a very significant risk to human health. That’s not surprising when you think about it. Do you really want traces of raw cow poo on your fruit and vegetables?
There isn’t much evidence that the reverse is true either. Food produced using modern techniques is no better or worse for you than the traditional methods but one thing HAS changed massively. Food is now produced much more efficiently. The world’s population has almost reached 7 billion and we’re still producing food to feed everyone. Of course there are problems with getting it to the right people at the right time but that’s always been the case.
So here’s my suggestion for the week. Rather than pretending there was a distant age when things were better let’s look back and remember the massive proportion of children that never made it to their 5th birthday, the number of people who died of horrible diseases in their 20s and 30s and the endless sequence of famines. Let’s remember that in ancient Rome life expectancy was less than 30 and it didn’t get much better until the beginning of the 20th century.
Let’s also remember what helped us achieve all of. Science and medicine.
Sources
For a comparison of life expectancy data from around the world Wikipedia is a good starting point. It's also worth understanding what "life expectancy" actually means as well.
For details of Botswana's current life expectancy figures see here for data from the CIA World Factbook. Take a look also at the graph for death rate.
For a story on the impact of PMTCT see here.
A starting point for thinking about organic food is the Skeptoid podcast, in particular the episode on organic food here. This is where I found this piece from the American Council on Science and Health. Not worried about poo on your food? The US Food and Drug Administration are.
And that figure of 7 billion people? We'll get there later this month.
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