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Cat Ownership Correlated With Heart Health

Posted by kdawson on from the correlation-is-not-causality dept.

Ant tips us to a story making the rounds lately, based on reporting a couple of weeks old, that owning a cat could cut your heart attack risk by one third. No such effect was seen from dog ownership, but the researchers say that could be because there weren't enough dog owners in the study population to provide meaningful statistics. The study: "...analyzed data on 4,435 Americans, aged 30 to 75, who took part in the federal government's second National Health and Nutrition Examination Study, which ran from 1976-1980. According to the data in the survey, 2,435 of the participants either owned a cat or had owned a cat in the past, while the remaining 2,000 had never done so. [The] team then tracked rates of death from all causes, including heart and stroke. Cat owners 'appeared to have a lower rate of dying from heart attacks' over 10 years of follow-up compared to feline-free folk..."

5 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. Makes Sense by curmudgeon99 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Cats are intelligent, interesting beings and they make you feel good. Dogs are dumb, slobbering beasts that make you take them outside to take a shit. I find on the surface that this makes complete and total intuitive sense.

    Cats Rock

    Dogs Suck

    1. Re:Makes Sense by vikstar · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      LOL, cats intelligent and dogs dumb? Cats crawl around scratching your blinds and carpet, and walk all over and sleep whatever they want. You can train a dog, but cats are too dumb to respond to any useful training other than knowing where its cat bowl is. When was the last time you saw a cat walking in the park next to its master, or rounding up a heard of sheep, or allowing blind people to safely cross the road, or sniffing drugs out at an airport? etc.

      Cats Suck

      Dogs Rock

      --
      The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
  2. Re:Ownership?? by Tranzistors · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Where are you from? Europe?

  3. animals can't communicate and cognate by circletimessquare · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    as such they are lesser beings that are suitable for food and pets. it is entirely reasonable to kill them for food and speak of them as property. no one should be cruel to them simply because cruelty to animals is a preface to cruelty to other human beings

    to think of animals as equal to people, such as the woman i walked by in manhattam wearing the "animals are people too!" t shirt, or to think of animals as superior to people (more noble, because they don't commit various crimes you see somepeople engaged in), is an error in your ability to see a proper persepctive on the world

    we humans matter more than animals. we just do. the moral basis for this is simply that we can do more, we are more powerful, due to our brains and our ability you communicate dense meaning. this is a burden we must carry, and one of our responsilibities is that we make sure the planet and the animals in our care are not treated cruelty or abused

    but in no way does that equate to animals deserving anything of equal consideration or import as a human being

    animals are property. nothing wrong with that concept at all

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  4. Re:My cats by superyooser · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I have a 1 year old persian that is Evil Incarnate. Is its name Ahmadinejad?