Slashdot Mirror
Americans Less Healthy, But Outlive Brits
An anonymous reader writes with this intriguing snippet: "Older Americans are less healthy than their English counterparts, but they live as long or even longer than their English peers, according to a new study by researchers from the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. Researchers found that while Americans aged 55 to 64 have higher rates of chronic diseases than their peers in England, they died at about the same rate. And Americans age 65 and older — while still sicker than their English peers — had a lower death rate than similar people in England, according to findings published in the journal Demography."
Instead of bowing down to a King and Queen, we decided to grow testicles instead. "As for attractiveness of women - which country has the worst obesity problem?" - Fat tits are better than crooked teeth. Oh, and BTW, why do you call us Red Necks, when your 'royal' 'family' is more inbred than we could ever be?
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
My father just had a heart attack on vacation and was in critical care in a Canadian hospital, one of their best. We're Americans. After 72 hours in a medically induced coma they told us he had suffered massive brain damage and would never live independently. They pushed a DNR order and removal of his breathing tube for the next 2 days. Hard. I recorded the interactions with the doctors on my cell phone.
My sister and I fought the entire medical team for two days, after which he regained slight signs of consciousness. Two days later, four days after they had written him off, he was walking. The long term effect has been loss of feeling in his right heel. He's now at home and doing fine and will get to spend some extra time with his grandchildren. He's only 72.
I am absolutely convinced if we were Canadians we would have buried him. They treated us like we were insane for wanting to keep him alive for another two weeks to observe any changes. All the healthcare professionals we spoke with in the US said 72 hours was way too soon.
So I'm damn glad I didn't "throw in the towel". All I wanted was to wait a few more days for his condition to stabilize before pumping him full of morphine and yanking his life support thank you very much.