

US Life Expectancy Up To 77.9 Years - cwan
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006465.html

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hughprime
_Between 2006 and 2007, mortality rates declined significantly for eight of
the 15 leading causes of death. Declines were observed for influenza and
pneumonia (8.4 percent), homicide (6.5 percent), accidents (5 percent), heart
disease (4.7 percent), stroke (4.6 percent), diabetes (3.9 percent),
hypertension (2.7 percent), and cancer (1.8 percent)._

This is reported as good news, but in itself it doesn't tell us much. People
still have to die of something, and if they're not dying of one thing they're
dying of another.

If a plague of crocodiles started eating all the first-born sons then this
would show up in the statistics as a huge drop in the cancer mortality rate,
but it probably wouldn't be good news.

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Femur
I hope that soon we can stop focusing on increasing average life-expectancy
(mostly controllable through diet/prevention) and focus on increasing maximum
possible life-expectancy.

EDIT: I also think it is remarkable that average life-expectancy has increased
despite a large increase in obesity.

~~~
secret
I wonder how life expectancy by age has changed. This figure most likely
applies only at birth.

