
The Leading Causes of Death from 1900-2010 - jacquesm
http://www.businessinsider.com/leading-causes-of-death-from-1900-2010-2012-6?op=1
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tokenadult
I remember discussions a couple years ago here on Hacker News of the original
2012 article from the _New England Journal of Medicine._ [1] A lot of health
discussions here on Hacker News badly need historical perspective like this,
as prevalent causes of death in the United States (and other developed
countries) have changed enormously during the lifetimes of my aunts and uncles
(two of whom are still living in their own homes without expensive medical
support in their nineties). _Scientific American_ ran a good article, "How We
All Will Live to Be 100,"[2] that same year on the huge gains in longevity
that have been achieved by reductions in disease burden. Official health
statistics show that life expectancy has been increasing at age 40, at age 60,
at age 65, and even at age 80[3] quite steadily throughout my lifetime and
throughout your lifetime. We may outlive a few of today's common causes of
death if these trends keep up.

[1]
[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1113569](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1113569)

[2]
[http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/ful...](http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/full/scientificamerican0912-54.html)

[3]
[http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...](http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box/scientificamerican0912-54_BX1.html)

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trhway
it looks logical - once influenza was stopped from killing people before age
40-50, people started to live into the age where cancer/Alzheimer are among
the majors. Once we reign in the cancer/etc... and will be living well into
80-90-100 something else will be the majors there. For example something
computer induced (i'll personally have 65+ years at the screen (or at/with
mental implant which will replace the screen in 10 years) by the age of 80).
Or something like "you've been terminated as ratio of you
production/consumption fell below 1" :)

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cpncrunch
The other possibility is that an increasingly poor diet and lack of exercise
are contributing to higher mortality from cancer and heart disease. People
used to walk a lot more and be more likely to do manual labour, but nowadays
(especially in the USA) people hardly walk at all. Also, people eat a lot more
processed food than they used to.

~~~
cpncrunch
Not sure why the downvote. There is overwhelming evidence showing that both
cancer and heart disease are significantly influenced by diet and exercise.

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EdiX
Probably because the data in the post suggests otherwise:

\- The causes of death with the strongest correlation to diet and exercise
(heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes) have increased only
slightly.

\- All those causes of death have some degree of correlation with age

\- The cause of death most strongly correlated with old age is the one showing
the strongest increase (the correlation between diet and exercise and cancer
is tenuous at best)

\- It doesn't explain the heart disease peak in the '60s

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Retric
Cancer, Heart disease, and Diabetes have far more effective treatments now vs
the 1960's suggesting a massive 'hidden' increase.

CPR for example was first promoted as a technique for the public to learn in
the 1970s.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cardiopulmonary_resu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cardiopulmonary_resuscitation)

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neals
Ok... so how are we going to keep our hearts healthy? I don't think that
sitting down 12 hours a days is helping?

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bbcbasic
I wonder if we need to change our interface with the PC - the typewriter is so
19th century. Something like Kinect waving your hands to get stuff from your
mind into the box. I reckon with shorthand encoding you could get 200WPM, and
fit.

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Zigurd
Some people will continue to be paid to sit and think. The remaining employed
people will be moving about using a mobile device and interacting with a
sensor and beacon-suffused work environment. Perhaps we can have a 30 hour
work week and have more time for physical activity.

~~~
bbcbasic
All sound plausible. Except the 30 hours.

~~~
lucaspiller
Exactly. When you can work while driving, in line to get coffee, collecting
the kids from school, going to the doctor etc I guess we'll spend more time
working. I wonder if implants will let us work while we sleep?

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aquadrop
Graphs from the article with original data [1] looks positive to me - heart's
diseases and cancer peaked and now in decline.

[1]
[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1113569](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1113569)

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ComputerGuru
Was anyone else surprised to see death by accidents drop? I assumed as health-
related concerns went down, the accidents ratio would go up?

Then again, I don't see "war" in the list so if casualties of war are grouped
under accidents...

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maxerickson
Occupational safety wasn't a very big concern in 1900.

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mtdewcmu
I'm wondering if this dataset exclusively covers the US, and if so, how much
of any decrease in occupational accidents can be attributed to the loss in
manufacturing jobs to overseas. Whether that represents progress is a matter
of perspective.

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maxerickson
If you click through you can look at the numbers:

[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1113569](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1113569)

(hover over the line graph)

The non vehicle accident death rate in 1900 was around 80, in 1950 around 40
and around 20 between 1980 and 2000.

So half of the decline was before manufacturing really hit it's stride in the
US, and the decline slackened off as capacity really started moving overseas.

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sirsar
I believe this data directly disagrees with cancer.gov's dataset, overstating
deaths from cancer.

[http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html](http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html)

~~~
dzdt
How so? Your link shows a bit under 200 deaths per 100,000 per year from
cancer (hard to read exactly on the graph) whereas the OP shows 185.9. Looks
consistent to me.

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drderidder
Death by worms sounds particularly unpleasant. Nice to see that one has gone
down.

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Thaxll
How can this be accurate, I mean in 1900 we didn't have the knowledge to
accurately diagnose the cause of the death?

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saalweachter
Well, it's not that common that people just keel over dead and then a medical
examiner has to deduce the cause of death from the corpse.

People get sick, they go to the doctor, they get diagnosed, and then they die.
Whatever they were last sick from, that's what killed them. A lot of the
illnesses on the 1900 list are not really going to have been hard for a 1900
doctor to diagnose. The doctor says you've got the flu or influenza or
pneumonia, you probably do.

So the 1900 list is probably pretty accurate.

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xacaxulu
No terrorism or ebola!?!?

