People Are Living Longer, With More Disabilities Than Ever

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People Are Living Longer, With More Disabilities Than Ever

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 14, 2012 @10:37AM from the no-boredom-does-not-count-as-a-disability dept.

skade88 writes "Worldwide, people are living longer. Their lives are starting to look more like the lives of Americans: too much food is a problem, death in childhood is becoming less common, and so on. Yet with a population that lives through what would once have killed us, disabilities are starting to become the norm. A research report from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has a good glimpse into the new emerging world we find ourselves in." The Guardian has a nice visualization of the mortality data (but take note of shifting scales on the Y-axis).

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It's not an obesity by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-14 10:48 · Score: 2, Funny

It's not an obesity, it's just a different body shape....
1. Re:It's not an obesity by PlusFiveTroll · 2012-12-14 12:52 · Score: 1
  
  Must be the Spherical Cow. Physics will be easier in the future.
2. Re:It's not an obesity by hairyfeet · 2012-12-14 16:17 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I have to wonder how much of the supposed "obesity" and illnesses can end up being traced to all the chemicals we are ingesting and are exposed to every damned day of our lives? I had a friend that was always sick with one thing or another, had problems with his weight, moved out into the middle of nowhere in the desert and all of his problems went away once he was no longer sucking down chemicals all the time.
  You look at the tests of the water that comes out the tap, the foods we eat, hell you can test the blood of a newborn and find plastic floating in the bloodstream. I would love to see someone just set vials up with the correct amounts of this and that chemical that the average person in the USA ingests because i'm sure it would shock most people.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
3. Re:It's not an obesity by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-14 18:52 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  It's probably a problem, but it's much less of a problem than overeating, lack of exercise, stress and being under rested. I remember some years back dropping 30 lbs., just by cutting out between meal snacks and getting more shut eye.
  It's probably worth researching, but until people are doing the things that are known to prevent obesity, there isn't much point in worrying about the possibilities of chemicals and such causing problems. In fact, you really need to rule out the things I listed to have any hope of narrowing down the cause.
  Also, if we told the pro-obesity morons to shut the fuck up when they try to rationalize the choice to be obese we might get somewhere. Anybody who consumes less than what they are burning will lose weight and if you manage it with exercise you'll get healthier in that respect. Telling people that it's not their fault that they're fat, just dis-empowers them and gives people the idea that being fat is a legitimate lifestyle choice. In reality it's an extremely selfish thing people do to themselves and those around them.
  I'm off about 80 pounds from my peak and feeling better than ever. But, it probably wouldn't have been 80 pounds if I had been hearing about the fact that I was gaining too much weight.
4. Re:It's not an obesity by mikael · 2012-12-15 10:31 · Score: 1
  
  Those things are well known:
  1. Get sleep between 10am and 2pm as well as whatever feels like a full nights sleep (6 to 8 hours). Having the feeling of being able to doze lightly for an hour or two before actually having to get up.
  2. Have a well ventilated bedroom. I've heard people say how they were amazed they only needed six hours sleep when they stayed in a hotel room with combined air conditioning and filtering as well as blackout curtains (thick curtains that go all the way down to the floor and blockout sunlight entirely, as well as street lighting).
  My last apartment gave me the choice of either leaving a window open and hearing everything from refuse collectors at 6am to students coming in home drunk at 3am, and neighbors starting to do the garden at 7am. There simply wasn't any six let alone eight hour slot where there was a quiet time to sleep. Had to throw up another blanket over the thin fabric curtains in order to block out the yellow glow from street and security lights.
  3. Avoid the processed foods - some have up to 50% combined with salt as a preservative. The salt encourages water retainment which in turn encourages cells to expand with fat.
  4. Avoid sugars. Muscles switch to fast burning of sugar that the slow consumption of protein.
  5. Eat lots of vegetables like carrots, brussel sprouts and broccoli. They actually break down the toxins that the body can't expel and just encases in fat. If you figure that plants probably have had to find ways of avoiding being poisoned by decomposing critters, they would find a way of absorbing those nutrients.
  
  --
  Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Speaking as an example... by RedHat+Rocky · 2012-12-14 10:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm a guy who recently had a piece of matter removed from the brain area and am still recovering six months later.
What's your point? Better that I was already dead?

--
Anything is possible given time and money.
1. Re:Speaking as an example... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-14 10:57 · Score: 1
  
  I'm a guy who recently had a piece of matter removed from the brain area and am still recovering six months later. What's your point? Better that I was already dead?
  I think the point is that there are more people like you in "the new emerging world we find ourselves in."
2. Re:Speaking as an example... by erice · 2012-12-14 11:17 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I'm a guy who recently had a piece of matter removed from the brain area and am still recovering six months later.
  What's your point? Better that I was already dead?
  The point is that while there has a been a great deal of success in keeping people alive, there has been little success in keeping them healthy. Even putting aside the individual pain and suffering, there are serious economic consequences. Unhealthy people produce less and require more from society. The sicker they are, the more this is true. Eventually society may have to let people die that they technically could save because they can not afford the resources to keep these people alive.
3. Re:Speaking as an example... by blue+trane · 2012-12-14 11:28 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Economics is a tool that we invented to serve us. It is not some God that we must practice human sacrifice to.
  If automation allows us to live a life where we are more free to do what we want, that's a good thing. We're closer to utopia.
4. Re:Speaking as an example... by JackieBrown · 2012-12-14 11:30 · Score: 1, Troll
  
  Unhealthy people produce less and require more from society. The sicker they are, the more this is true. Eventually society may have to let people die that they technically could save because they can not afford the resources to keep these people alive.
  These kind of stories are why we have things like the school shooting. It's not guns. This counrty has always had lots of people with guns.
  What has changed is the way we see life. We see human life and teach it to our children as a problem. It's an overpopulation problem, people are evil, people are the earth's enemy, etc.
  Movies like avator, underworld (last one,) planet of the apes, district 9, and others all show humanity (except for the film's heros) as revolting.
5. Re:Speaking as an example... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-14 11:50 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  What has changed is the way we see life. We see human life and teach it to our children as a problem. It's an overpopulation problem, people are evil, people are the earth's enemy, etc.
  Today we treat life as more precious than any time in our history. Up until the middle of this century, life was cheap. People regularly dying on their jobs was considered no big deal. People were left to starve or freeze if they couldn't afford to take care of themselves. We spend a fortune on the last few years of life now, before we'd just let people die. Your confused view of history makes me thing you're probably just as wrong about guns, but I don't think you should by trying to pull guns into this at all.
6. Re:Speaking as an example... by RedHat+Rocky · 2012-12-14 12:08 · Score: 1
  
  Major cause: person kept alive
  Solution: uhhh....
  
  --
  Anything is possible given time and money.
7. Re:Speaking as an example... by NFN_NLN · 2012-12-14 13:00 · Score: 1
  
  I'm a guy who recently had a piece of matter removed from the brain area and am still recovering six months later.
  What's your point? Better that I was already dead?
  Depends. Was the piece of matter your frontal lobe?
8. Re:Speaking as an example... by fredprado · 2012-12-14 13:38 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Nope. Economy is a tool we invented to understand and control how limited resources are used. The resources, being limited, will exhaust themselves even if you refuse to learn Economy or believe in it.
9. Re:Speaking as an example... by fredprado · 2012-12-14 13:42 · Score: 1
  
  So what? For each Stephen Hawking, who, despite his considerable disabilities, is able to give more to society than he takes, there are thousands of other who aren't. Nobody is saying that we would like to see them unattended, but at some point it may be necessary for society to severely limit the resources that are directed towards it.
10. Re:Speaking as an example... by jc42 · 2012-12-14 13:45 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  The point is that while there has a been a great deal of success in keeping people alive, there has been little success in keeping them healthy.
  And assorted people, including those working in the health industry, have explained that this is a simple result of a "market" health system. Thus, I've heard or read a number of exchanges in which an interviewer asks a Pharm rep why their company has gotten out of the vaccine business. The reply is generally of the form "Because vaccines aren't profitable". The interviewer asks for further details. The rep explains that a vaccine cures the patient, or prevents them from even getting sick. This means that you sell them nothing, or maybe a few doses of a medicine, and then you make no more money from them. The profitable drugs/treatments are those that maintains the patient as a patient, requiring ongoing treatment for the rest of their lives.
  I first ran across this, years ago, as a criticism of the commercial health system. But now I'm hearing it from the supporters and reps of that health system, as an explanation for why they're so profitable.
  So if you want to be kept healthy, maybe you should be pushing for a system that wants you to be healthy, rather than one that wants you as a (paying) patient. The current system (at least here in the US) punishes the companies that market things that keep you healthy, and rewards those who convert you to a patient with a chronic condition.
  
  --
  Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
11. Re:Speaking as an example... by ColdWetDog · 2012-12-14 14:01 · Score: 2
  
  The point is that while there has a been a great deal of success in keeping people alive, there has been little success in keeping them healthy.
  As a generality, this isn't true. We are getting much better at successfully treating many diseases and problems such that people are returning to society more functional than ever. Even older people are often living healthier lives (with concomitantly fewer medical bills).
  
  Even putting aside the individual pain and suffering, there are serious economic consequences. Unhealthy people produce less and require more from society. The sicker they are, the more this is true. Eventually society may have to let people die that they technically could save because they can not afford the resources to keep these people alive.
  It's much more nuanced than that. Yes, there are economic consequences. There are always economic consequences. You have to decide just what the economy is there for. Is it to keep JRR Tolikien's heirs rolling in money for multiple generations or is it to keep as much of the populace as happy as possible or some complex mix of the two extremes? If you're trying to make as much money for the 'economy' as possible, yes, you euthanize everyone who isn't producing at some set level. But instead of building another Aircraft Carrier group, perhaps society decides to spend the money on nursing home care for the less 'productive' folks. Is that a bad thing.
  Economic arguments, when pushed to the extremes you seem to be pushing them, are pretty hollow constructs for a society.
  
  --
  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
12. Re:Speaking as an example... by sjames · 2012-12-14 15:59 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Currently it seems to be more a tool to create fantasies about why under 1% of the population have a natural right to own more than half of everything while others die from overpriced medical care.
13. Re:Speaking as an example... by Chewbacon · 2012-12-14 16:16 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  You can do something for someone or something to someone. I see too many people come into my ICU, many are in their golden years, having treatment turn a fatally acute encounter turn into a long unhealthy condition. What does it do for them? Nothing. What does it do to them? Torture, steals their dignity. A neuro surgeon told me something like: sometimes my job is making people's time left on earth as undesirable and expensive as possible.
  
  --
  Chewbacon
  The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
14. Re:Speaking as an example... by davester666 · 2012-12-14 17:19 · Score: 2
  
  Obviously, the solution is that we all pay big pharmacy a monthly fee unless we are sick, in which case they get nothing.
  
  --
  Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
15. Re:Speaking as an example... by SternisheFan · 2012-12-14 17:34 · Score: 2
  
  So what? For each Stephen Hawking, who, despite his considerable disabilities, is able to give more to society than he takes, there are thousands of other who aren't. Nobody is saying that we would like to see them unattended, but at some point it may be necessary for society to severely limit the resources that are directed towards it.
  Now how can society know that a person who was allowed to die because of 'the cost' may or may not have been the person who in the future makes a discovery that would be of great benefit to humanity? Say, finds the cure for cancer or inexpensive power generation? Or would have been the parent of such a person?
  Now the Nazi's believed in killing off the weak and infirm of mind and body. Not 'desirable' candidates for their "master race". Would these same rules apply to a cherished family member of yours? What of just plain caring for another life?
  In the last 100 years many diseases have had cures, which never would have been cured if there had not been thoughtful, caring people to find the answers. No, I cannot accept this concept, it flys in the face of all that makes human beings worthy of being called "human".
16. Re:Speaking as an example... by fredprado · 2012-12-14 18:07 · Score: 1
  
  Do not blame the ignorant or malicious misuse of a subject to the subject itself.
17. Re:Speaking as an example... by fredprado · 2012-12-14 18:13 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  No they cannot. Nobody can know what a person who died could do, but when the cost to keep everyone alive no matter how much effort and resources need to be spent for that escalates to something that can't be sustained this becomes an irrelevant point.
  
  Sure in the future we may be able to ban all diseases, then again we may not, but now there is so much we can do as a society and we need to weight the efforts needed, the resources compromised by these efforts and what will be left unattended as consequence.
  
  If you have to neglect the education of 100 people to treat a very expensive disability of a single one for life what will you choose? These are the kind of hard choices that are necessary when the resources are not infinite.
18. Re:Speaking as an example... by sjames · 2012-12-14 18:31 · Score: 2
  
  When the abuses are that rampant and the twisted and broken logic pervades the literature, it does warrant subjecting any claims made to extraordinarily high scrutiny.
19. Re:Speaking as an example... by fredprado · 2012-12-14 19:09 · Score: 1
  
  Abuses are not as rampant as you may think. If everything you see is nonsense, you should question if maybe the nonsensical is you.
20. Re:Speaking as an example... by houghi · 2012-12-14 20:50 · Score: 1
  
  Says who? "There are more people with disabilities" does not mean "We need to kill people who have disabilities".
  My great aunt said it several years ago already: People who would have died in the past are kept alive now. She was talking more about people at the end of their life. She was a person who was very much in favor of euthanasia, yet that dd not stop her from becoming the the oldest person in the world
  Oh and the "Wisdom" there is pure bullshit that she told the press.
  When she was born, the doctor told her that she would not reach the age of 6 weeks. Due to the good care of her grandmother, she survived, but was always very sick. Other kids of that period would have died.
  Another example is Stephen Hawking who would have died in different times. There are also the extremely obese people who would either not exist in different times, or would die much earlier.
  You are an example as well. And this does not mean all those people should die. It just means they would have. This is not better or worse in it self. And even if you are personally involved, they are just cold facts. Nothing more, nothing less.
  Now we know these facts, we can start to think what we are going to do with it. Perhaps trying to be more pro-active and not so much retro-active in our health system could be something to think about.
  Abortion of kids with 'bad' DNA will be something else that might be put on the table.
  A lot of good AND bad things will be put on the table, but that is not what this was about.
  
  --
  Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
21. Re:Speaking as an example... by AmiMoJo · 2012-12-14 22:08 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Economy isn't about how limited resources are used, it is about how they are distributed and ownership. When it fails society steps in to redistribute, which is why most of western Europe has high quality social healthcare, for example.
  The reality is that most western countries have more resources than we need, they are just distributed badly due to economics.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
22. Re:Speaking as an example... by AmiMoJo · 2012-12-14 22:12 · Score: 1
  
  If you have to neglect the education of 100 people to treat a very expensive disability of a single one for life what will you choose? These are the kind of hard choices that are necessary when the resources are not infinite.
  False dichotomy. There simply are not any medical procedures costing that much which would result in someone still being alive and not suffering unduly. Plus as a whole our societies have enough resources to provide everyone with high quality medical care, they are just not distributed in a way that allows that.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
23. Re:Speaking as an example... by w_dragon · 2012-12-14 23:50 · Score: 1
  
  Vaccines aren't profitable if everyone is making them and the only way to compete is price. Neither is penicillin, or any medication that is reasonably cheap to produce and not protected by patents. Once only 1 or 2 companies are making vaccines they'll set the price where they'll make a nice profit and laugh about how they can get a 200% margin on something that is almost required by law.
24. Re:Speaking as an example... by jc42 · 2012-12-15 03:24 · Score: 1
  
  Vaccines aren't profitable if everyone is making them and the only way to compete is price
  True, but that's equally true for all other drugs. The way it's usually handled is that the "innovator" company gets a patent. Then they have a monopoly for many years, because nobody can legally compete with them. Or they can license the drug and collect royalties while others do all the production and marketing work.
  That's just what they do with most new drugs. But with vaccines, they don't seem to bother, because even with a legal monopoly, it's still difficult to recover the development costs.
  Of course, this is made worse by the religious nuts who've been campaigning against vaccines lately. The idea seems to be that if God created the organism that causes a disease, you shouldn't violate God's will by interfering with that organism's life cycle. ;-) But, of course, this has nothing to do with economics.
  
  --
  Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
25. Re:Speaking as an example... by tepples · 2012-12-15 04:57 · Score: 1
  
  You're confusing the terms "economics" and "capitalism". Socialism, such as health care in Europe, is one of the topics studied in economics.
26. Re:Speaking as an example... by fredprado · 2012-12-15 06:00 · Score: 1
  
  No it is not. There are plenty of medical treatments that cost enough today through a person's life to compare with the full education of a hundred people. And no society does not have the resources to give high quality medical care, high quality education, food, safety, structure and everything else needed without compromising. With the exception of the few places that have very high resources and very low populations that is simply not true. Even Sweden, which is the textbook example of this exception had to cut their traditional model of social security and turn it into the model used by private securities because it was collapsing.
27. Re:Speaking as an example... by sjames · 2012-12-15 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  I can as easily say that the abuses are deeper and more fundamental than you might think. You should step back from the trees for a moment and have a look at the forest.
28. Re:Speaking as an example... by fredprado · 2012-12-15 09:40 · Score: 1
  
  Spare me of your prejudices. Most of your "broken logic" that is pervasive in the literature, is more likely than not people telling things that, albeit true, are not what you want to hear. But by all means, keep pretending to yourself that you know better and see where it takes you.
29. Re:Speaking as an example... by sjames · 2012-12-15 09:55 · Score: 1
  
  You seem awfully defensive. Not to mention prejudiced to the status quo.
30. Re:Speaking as an example... by fredprado · 2012-12-15 10:02 · Score: 1
  
  I am all but that, but you on the other hand seems to be at the end of your almost non existent arguments.
31. Re:Speaking as an example... by mikael · 2012-12-15 10:37 · Score: 1
  
  Isn't something like that curable. fMRI scan of the hip area to see where the pain is occurring? Then realign the bone or nerve to stop the pinching?
  
  --
  Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
32. Re:Speaking as an example... by sjames · 2012-12-15 11:31 · Score: 1
  
  The funny thing is, I have presented no argument, only an observation. You have posted only a denial. Did you really imagine this was some sort of deep debate?
33. Re:Speaking as an example... by fredprado · 2012-12-15 11:38 · Score: 1
  
  You have present only paranoia and self-denial, which can be considered arguments, albeit feebly.
34. Re:Speaking as an example... by sjames · 2012-12-15 12:26 · Score: 1
  
  No, they could not have been arguments, but if it makes your ego feel a bit healthier, fine. You win the empty exchange of not quite opinions.
35. Re:Speaking as an example... by fredprado · 2012-12-15 12:33 · Score: 1
  
  You, my friend, seems to be the one with a wounded ego here. To keep arguing in a discussion which, in your opinion, lacks any argument. I suggest you look for professional help. With some therapy you can at least leave behind some of your self-hatred.
36. Re:Speaking as an example... by sjames · 2012-12-15 13:30 · Score: 1
  
  I'm looking at this as being like a conversation with an argumentative version of Elisa.
37. Re:Speaking as an example... by fredprado · 2012-12-15 13:58 · Score: 1
  
  Nah! You are just being more erratic, inconsistent and incoherent with each message, but as I said previously, if you look for professional help you can at least improve a bit.
38. Re:Speaking as an example... by uniquename72 · 2012-12-15 14:46 · Score: 1
  
  So if you want to be kept healthy, maybe you should be pushing for a system that wants you to be healthy, rather than one that wants you as a (paying) patient.
  Or you could eat right, exercise, and moderate health-negative behaviors like drinking and tanning, and when the end comes to your long life (barring accidents, etc.) just refuse to live as a medicated invalid and move on.
  
  Then you don't have to worry about being "kept" anything.
39. Re:Speaking as an example... by Max+Threshold · 2012-12-15 21:43 · Score: 1
  
  We didn't invent economics, we discovered it. We don't get to choose what its implications are; we only get to choose what we do with the knowledge. The real "human sacrifice" is in choosing not to know or pursue the optimal solution to minimizing human suffering.
40. Re:Speaking as an example... by exploder · 2012-12-16 02:15 · Score: 1
  
  I've heard or read a number of exchanges in which an interviewer asks a Pharm rep why their company has gotten out of the vaccine business. The reply is generally of the form "Because vaccines aren't profitable". The interviewer asks for further details. The rep explains that a vaccine cures the patient, or prevents them from even getting sick. This means that you sell them nothing, or maybe a few doses of a medicine, and then you make no more money from them. The profitable drugs/treatments are those that maintains the patient as a patient, requiring ongoing treatment for the rest of their lives.
  [Citation Needed], indeed. Can you point to a real live Pharm rep who actually says this? I mean, we all know that's essentially how it works, but I might invest in torch and pitchfork stocks if someone official is actually on record...
  
  --
  Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
41. Re:Speaking as an example... by jc42 · 2012-12-17 09:56 · Score: 1
  
  Hey, which stock exchange deals in "torch and pitchfork" stocks? Interested potential customers want to know ... ;-)
  Meanwhile, on a more serious train, I didn't take note of the names (or employers) of the people in such interviews. I just found that they were making, uh, "interesting" comments that seemed to agree with predictions from assorted economist types. What was most interesting was that they'd so openly make such comments to known interviewers, despite the obvious danger from people with torches and pitchforks if their names became common knowledge. Apparently they thought that the American public had internalized the "market forces" ideology so thoroughly that they were safe in admitting their approach within range of a recording device.
  
  --
  Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
42. Re:Speaking as an example... by jc42 · 2012-12-17 11:12 · Score: 1
  
  Or you could eat right, exercise, and moderate health-negative behaviors like drinking and tanning, ...
  My one criticism of this is the extensive evidence that ethanol in "moderate" quantities is very strongly correlated with living longer. The only problem is maintaining the "moderate" level of input.
  The first evidence I read of this was back in the 1970s, when the UK's medical folks did what's now called a "data dredging" study of their medical records to learn what things were correlated with lifespan. One of the strongest signals that they reported was with alcohol. Their summary was that, while drunkards didn't fare too well, the teetotalers didn't do much better. The longest lifespan was correlated with 2-4 "drinks" (around an ounce of ethanol each) per day, depending on their weight of course. They also reported that the strongest effect was from the beer and wine drinkers, while people who consumed mostly distilled beverages had only about half the lifespan benefit. OTOH, people who drank alcohol mixed with fruit juices benefitted as much as the beer and wine drinkers. They suggested that this meant that ethanol itself provided only half the benefit, and the rest probably came from the vitamins provided by the yeast or fruit juices. They also said that there was weak evidence that the best approach is a glass or two of fermented beverages with every meal. Their main conclusion was the canonical "Further research is needed".
  My wife has worked with medical statistics for a few decades now, and she has enjoyed finding and passing on the results of this further research. Several times per year, a new study has come out reporting the mechanisms behind the benefits of such low levels of ethanol in the human diet. Every such report seems to make the story more complex than it was before.
  This has become one of the canonical examples of a "J-shaped" response curve. In small quantities, ethanol has measurable health benefits, but above a certain level, it becomes a toxin. This is similar to the response curve for most vitamins, though 2-4 ounces per day is orders of magnitude too high to fit the definition of "vitamin".
  Meanwhile, a number of biologists I know chimed in with the observation that we humans are descended from tree-living primates, whose diet included a large quantity of fruits. Most fruits, especially those with a significant sugar content, come with a load of yeasts, and are typically around 1/2 to 1% ethanol. We primates are adapted to this diet. We have metabolic tools for dealing with the ethanol, which we metabolize as a simple sugar. Like other fruit-eating animals (elephants, flying foxes, etc. ;-), we tend to like things with low levels of ethanol. A diet with a glass of beer or wine per meal produces stomach content around 1% ethanol. So it's no surprise that it should be a beneficial diet for us.
  The main problem with all of this is that a fraction (5%-10% according to various sources) of the human population become physically addicted to ethanol and become alcoholics. Such individuals are better off not consuming it at all. They may not live as long as the "moderate" drinkers, but they'll be better off than if they follow their natural urges and drink too much.
  As usual, YMMV. ;-) And further research is still needed ...
  
  --
  Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Well yeah by MichaelSmith · 2012-12-14 11:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

People are dying slower.

--
http://michaelsmith.id.au
And the biggest disability is . . . obesity! by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2012-12-14 11:00 · Score: 1

http://www.rttnews.com/2024044/obesity-is-a-bigger-problem-globally-than-hunger.aspx?type=hnr
Strange for both these news items to pop up at the same time . . .

--
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
1. Re:And the biggest disability is . . . obesity! by timeOday · 2012-12-14 11:47 · Score: 2
  
  You mis-quoted your link, which states that obesity is now a bigger killer than hunger. But not, in fact, the biggest (from the article):
  
  In charting risk factors, the researchers found that diets low in fruit were responsible for more disease than obesity or physical inactivity. That conclusion was reached through analysis of the health effects of various components of diet and the number of people consuming diets high or low in those components.
  "We were very surprised," Murray said of the fruit finding. "I'm a pretty profound diet skeptic. But the evidence on diet is as convincing as on obesity."
  I guess I can admit to being completely surprised by that, if the study's authors were too.
Look at that sharp falloff in neonatal deaths by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-14 11:00 · Score: 1

Look at that sharp falloff in neonatal deaths after birth. Whats up with that?
And nice to see diarrhea stays strong in the death game from one end of the spectrum to the other. And yet we have no American Diarrhea Society or Brown-Ribbon campaigns.
With More Disabilities Than Ever? by G3ckoG33k · 2012-12-14 11:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

"With More Disabilities Than Ever"?
That is not necessarily so. There may just be more diagnosed and reported than ever, at least in releative terms.
In absolute numbers, yes. But that is due to Earth's population growth...
1. Re:With More Disabilities Than Ever? by AHuxley · 2012-12-14 14:52 · Score: 1
  
  It depends how you look at it.
  In Australia you have an older population. When younger they where exposed to heavy industry, farming, transport over many years.
  Mining, electrical, ship building, trams, busses, home building, cloth dying, pest control would be the classics.
  Then you have exotic metals been moved down ducts - an example with a small jet with an AC issue. Staff would be feeling ill, not walking in a safe manner. The press LOL at reports - drunk. Heavy metal exposure will mean early and painful deaths.
  Daddy worked in a mine, shipyard, electrical work, earning good cash, walked home covered in "dust", kids come running - nice welcome home hug.
  Just as they are parents - 30-40 y later a slight cough sets in. Expert wants to know what they did to their lungs, explores family history, interviews father.
  Another early and very painful death.
  Solvent components used my the military are another interesting one. Drug, nuclear and gas testing during national service?
  What will medical care look like :
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/04/ann-clwyd-husband-died-hen
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2240075/Now-sick-babies-death-pathway-Doctors-haunting-testimony-reveals-children-end-life-plan.html
  My thoughts are if you have US style insurance, work cover, war veterans cover (personal or from marriage) you will be kept alive for some cast flow to the hospital/care home.
  You will be well treated with the best of personal care and tech. Drugs will be will tracked and corrected. Your billing codes pay the bills and a bit extra.
  If your pension or cover is pulled - then your in for a ride.
  Less drugs, less dr visits, longer waits -12, 24h before some form of care. That will add up. Late to hospital, a long wait, rushed staff...
  A nice empty bed in months.
  
  --
  Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
2. Re:With More Disabilities Than Ever? by KarlIsNotMyName · 2012-12-14 20:28 · Score: 1
  
  Human population growth. In some ways resulting in Earth population decline.
  Personally I think a lot more should be done to reduce or cease increasing our numbers. Great, we can keep people alive for longer, and sure, more people alive as well. But why do we need more people? We did okay being below 1 billion for tens of thousands of years, or hundreds of thousands, depending on how you look at it.
  
  --
  We are all God's parents.
Another in the list of "duh" studies by neminem · 2012-12-14 11:09 · Score: 2

Torchwood: Miracle Day was a great glimpse into the concept taken to the extreme. *Obviously* the more things used to kill you and now don't, the more people will live with crippling issues that used to be fatal ones. Not really news?
Shifting scale by J-1000 · 2012-12-14 11:11 · Score: 1

but take note of shifting scales on the Y-axis
This is so annoying.
Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-14 11:11 · Score: 5, Interesting

As in:
- Destruction through heating (like that whole heated dairy protein causing auto-immune diseases thing, but also destroying vitamins and enzymes).
- Extreme concentrations that would never appear in nature and cause strong imbalances (to the point of collapse) in the body (like sweets / stuff that's nearly pure starch, etc. but also salt or saturated fats).
- Lack of vital substances in plants grown on depleted soil that are only bigger because they have more water in them (adding to the imbalances, and causing many diseases).
- Thousands of drugs and unnatural substances given to animals and added to processed "food".
We shouldn't be surprised we get sick from them. We should be surprised our bodies are so resilient to survive this nasty waste at all!
Dr. M. O. Bruker studied these exact problems for five decades with over 50,000 patients... as did many others. And the result was always, that those so-called "age-related diseases" didn't come because of age, but *with* age... with decades of bad nutrition!
We've known this for 50 years now. But as long as the industry doesn't put the illness and pain of seven billion people above corporate greed, and as long as we the people don't stop buying their trash, and start supporting people people that *do* make good food for us... as long as *we* don't make that happen, nothing will change.
(Ask your local farmer and butcher and baker, etc. He'd love to sell you something of better quality. But he can't give you the illusion of cheapness because he won't employ the tricks and lies and shit that make you sick and will *really* cost you in the long term.)
Final conclusion: Thinking for the long term... thinking ahead... equals intelligence. The more a life-form can predict the future, and manipulate things so it ends up in his favor, the more intelligence it is. But it seems that nowadays, both people and companies, are just really fuckin' stupid.
1. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by alen · 2012-12-14 11:32 · Score: 1
  
  And how many times do you see people buy the cheapest and crappiest food and put IMO their $50,000 SUV?
  Lots of healthy food available. People choose not to buy it
2. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by Endovior · 2012-12-14 12:05 · Score: 2
  
  Well... it doesn't help that you're an AC. Show some balls and post with your name. Maybe your karma will take a hit, maybe not, but you'll never know if you hide in the shadows. Really, it's just a number. Does the idea of it going down a little frighten you?
  That said, I'd be inclined to argue that the 'quality of ingredients' problem is really two problems; one is how to keep good food fresh and healthy between production and consumption (a preservation and distribution problem), and the other is the competition between expensive good food and cheap inferior food (an economic problem).
  The first problem is a big deal; fresh food, in the most natural and healthy forms, doesn't have much shelf life... so to continue to feed a growing population, all kinds of preservation tricks were thought up. This is a millennia-old problem; and it's seriously a matter of life-and-death, since failing to use proper preservation and transportation techniques mean that whenever anything happens to the food supply, lots of people die; this is called 'famine'. It's not as much of a problem these days, thanks to preservatives; we can leave processed food in cans and bags on shelves for years, then ship it to the other side of the world when it's needed. Less healthy, sure, but starvation is MUCH less healthy.
  The second problem is the result of the practical consequences of solving the first. Preservatives and such make it easy to have cheap food available, and easy to sell it. Quality ingredients don't retain their quality for long; they rot. Yes, you can sell them for more when fresh... but only if you can sell them quickly. To call it 'greed' that corporations prefer to sell inferior, mass-market, preservative-laden food is to ignore the bigger picture; it's not feasible for seven billion people to get their food fresh from the farms, regardless of whatever companies stand between producer and consumer. The current population of the world is unsustainable without modern methods of preservation and distribution.
  You, individually, may or may not be in a position to choose better. Many people are too poor to choose otherwise; these people are among those who would die of starvation in the absence of the modern system. Those who can, may not choose to go to the effort regardless; they weigh other factors above their health, and make their purchasing decisions accordingly. Don't judge them too harshly; it's likely that you, too, have economic priorities higher than your own health. The economic state we are in now results from the decisions everyone makes, yes... but that doesn't mean that it's something that anyone or everyone could change. Population continues to increase. The modern system of preservation and distribution is part of the larger system that keeps them alive. There's only so much that can be done to increase productivity of land, so expect to see even more artificial chemicals and such in food as time goes on, not less. This will, of course, have negative local consequences. But life expectancy, on the whole, will continue to increase with population. This is called progress.
3. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by Paracelcus · 2012-12-14 12:32 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Not like "the good old days" when we all ate organic food and lived to the ripe old age of forty!
  
  --
  I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
4. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by gijoel · 2012-12-14 13:58 · Score: 1
  
  Oh man, I wish I had mod points.
5. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by phantomfive · 2012-12-14 15:18 · Score: 1
  
  So.....all I need is good nutrition and I'll live forever? Is that your point?
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
6. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by tbird81 · 2012-12-14 16:21 · Score: 2
  
  "Unnatural", "processed" - you know these are bullshit terms right?
  Organic food is unhealthier. Plenty of natural things are poison. And plenty of unprocessed things would be impossible to digest.
  Heating milk doesn't "cause auto-immune disease". I've drunk plenty of heated dairy products - no auto-immune disease. It doesn't even increase the risk! I hate that evil arseholes like you always pick on auto-immune disease to blame your pet hate for causing. But I know you do it because we don't know much about the triggers of AI conditions.
7. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by tbird81 · 2012-12-14 16:22 · Score: 1
  
  "Toxic"? Jesus, you love your hippie buzzwords. Insecticide is meant to be toxic - to insects. Has anyone died from this fantasy corn of yours? Or is it the new cause de jour of autism?
8. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by Artifakt · 2012-12-14 17:14 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, you're right, it's all 'choice'.
  People who have $50,000 SUVs are the top 10% of income earners or better. You say "how many times do you see...". Are you arguing that we wouldn't see the lower 90%, (or the lowest 30% or whatever), who simply don't have the option to pay as much for food, buying the same cheap crappy food in similar or worse proportions? What's your claim here? That if I could see what's really going on, I would see the wealthiest people choosing poorly, but wouldn't see the poor people having no choice? Or are you actually claiming that the poor make better choices than the rich? You're using anecdotes as data, appparently to turn 'some of the wealthiest make poor choices' into both 'everybody makes poor choices' and 'everybody has the same choices as the wealthy'.
  
  --
  Who is John Cabal?
9. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by ppanon · 2012-12-14 20:28 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  That average life expectancy was heavily pulled down by high infant mortality, lack of antibiotics to treat nasty bacterial infections like pneumonia, and agrarian lifestyles that were both harder on the body than modern white collar work and more dangerous (scythes, angry/in-pain animals, predators, sun exposure, etc.) . If you control for those differences, what do you get? Well, we don't know because they didn't realize 250 years ago that we would find useful background histories to supplement what little mortality/morbidity statistics they did collect.
  
  --
  Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
10. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-14 21:06 · Score: 1
  
  Problem is for most products the situation is usually as follows:
  Cheap house brand, unhealthy
  Expensive AA brand, also unhealthy
  Incredibly Expensive biological/healthy brand, with questionable healthiness, and less tasty to boot.
  Take meat. You can choose several regular kinds of meat or the biological/vegetarian one. The vegetarian one tastes like crap. With the biological one there is no way to guarantee the chicken/pigs/cows actually have a significantly better life than their normal meat brethren.
  Add to that the fact that most certification marks aren't even worth the plastic they are printed on and you might see why most people don't give a shit.
11. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by VoidCrow · 2012-12-15 03:52 · Score: 1
  
  It strikes me that widespread use of antivirals and antibiotics to treat obvious conditions will tend to favour the evolution of pathogens with unobvious results.
  It's not difficult to imagine pathogens that are very hard to culture or otherwise detect which nevertheless cause immune flare-ups.
  Evolution happens quite quickly at the microscopic level. Even at the small arthropod scale, I've seen big changes in insecticide resistance since I was a child. Fly sprays would kill flies with impressive effect when I was young, yet I now have a big can of permethrin insecticide that I've used once or twice and then given up on because it just doesn't work. Malathion-based nit solutions used to work. Now, they do not.
  The generation time at the microscopic scale is a lot shorter.
12. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by tbird81 · 2012-12-15 10:44 · Score: 1
  
  People have been getting autoimmune conditions for long before antibiotics were even conceived of by humans.
  And use of antibiotics favour evolution with fairly obvious results - it selects for resistance to the antibiotic. In fact, we usually know how bacteria do this; They use many different methods, including modifying their own proteins, pumping out the antibiotic, 'digesting' the antibiotic.
  I'm sure their are pathogens that trigger autoimmune disease, but antibiotics don't have anything to do with that. Neither does cooking milk proteins - it denatures the proteins, and this is means it is much more likely to do nothing.
13. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by Endovior · 2012-12-15 20:56 · Score: 1
  
  Agent Orange was meant to kill plants. Guess what else it did? Guess what company was responsible for making it? The effects aren't always as advertised.
  I haven't heard of anyone dying from GMO corn, but people have died from eating GMO crops: look up Pioneer Hi-Bred soybeans.
  Do people really need to die before you consider something to be harmful? The fact is that with GMO, we do not know the effects, and it could easily be decades before they become apparent. Biology is complicated shit, and changes introduced by GMO are not examined with an eye towards the unknown. We are like Marie Curie playing with glow-in-the-dark isotopes, only in our case there are hundreds of millions of us.
  Cite source better? Googling "Pioneer Hi-Bred soybeans" gets me stuff by the company itself, pages of positive news results, and government documents determining that the stuff doesn't pose a risk.
  Now, it's all well and good to call for caution. Remember, though... every policy has costs. Do you think people farm with pesticides, chemical fertilizers and toxin-resistant crops just because because they're greedy SOBs and absolutely must take in maximum profit for their investments? No, they do this because in some places, you simply can't grow enough food any other way, so if you don't farm that way, there's not enough food, and people starve to death. Google 'Green Revolution'. There are the technologies that transform starvation into plenty. Yes, they turn a profit... but more importantly, they save lives.
  Really, that is the essence of the situation. We're NOT merely talking about 'maybe some company makes a little more or less money'. This is food. Being able to grow it better, in worse conditions, means more places where we can grow food, and better yields in those places we can already grow food. That means people can live who could otherwise not.
  Like it or not, it IS progress; more food for more people. You can argue specifics about specific cases; scientists are not infallible. Sometimes they fuck up, even with billions of dollars of research riding on them. But on the whole, we have progress; human life gets better on average, permitting more human lives to exist. Your cautions are all well and good, and don't think for a moment that the scientists devising these things are ignorant of the risks. At the same time, don't you be ignorant of the benefits. Norman Borlaug, by spearheading the implementation of this stuff, may have saved a billion lives. That's billion with a B; one-seventh of all humans alive. This is a benefit which vastly outweighs the consequences. Indeed, I'd argue that it's a benefit that vastly outweighs all consequences, but perhaps you have an epistemic position that places something other than human life as your highest good, that considers some other factor as more important. If so, we don't even have a basis for discussion... but if you agree that human life is the highest concern, then you can't disagree that the real effect of these technologies, in human terms, is positive.
14. Re:Not too much food. Too much BAD food. by Paracelcus · 2012-12-17 09:09 · Score: 1
  
  You can easily look at the lives of adults (not killed in war) and find a percentage of the total life expectancy that exceeded forty.
  
  --
  I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Too much food isn't the problem by judoguy · 2012-12-14 11:12 · Score: 1

Too much crappy food, e.g., sugar and carbs (whole grains also). Too little fat. Substituting carbs for fat is killing more people than Stalin. (A turn of phrase, don't be so literal)

--
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
1. Re:Too much food isn't the problem by KarlIsNotMyName · 2012-12-14 20:32 · Score: 1
  
  We are an exception in some sense, by how we work together. An education is an important part of our strengths, passing on knowledge gathered by many individuals, across the generations. I'd rather people learned from the mistakes of others, than die from their own.
  
  --
  We are all God's parents.
2. Re:Too much food isn't the problem by jwilcox154 · 2012-12-15 04:47 · Score: 1
  
  I agree with one point, too much crappy food is the problem. People are getting too much of certain types of fatty acids (saturated and trans-fatty) while not getting enough of others (poly and monounsaturated) . Plus people are getting too many of the wrong carbs. How many people have enough soluble fiber in their diet? How many people have enough insoluble fiber in their diet? Whole grains are not necessarily the problem. Oats have a great number of nutrients. One such benefit is soluble fiber. Oats also contain the amino acids phenylalanine and tryptophan. The problem comes with all of the sweeteners being added to the oatmeal. Is the oat the only source of these nutrients? No they are not. The key to getting as many of the proper nutrients as possible is balance and of course trying to balance a diet is too much work for quite a few people. They would rather consume to what some corporation or some conspiracy theorist tell them to while not using critical thinking skills to decide on their own.
  Sources :
  http://www.livestrong.com/article/73628-foods-increase-norepinephrine-production/
  http://www.livestrong.com/article/323157-foods-that-increase-dopamine-and-norepinephrine/
  http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/what-eat-deep-sleep?page=3
pandemic by merxete · 2012-12-14 11:26 · Score: 1

There are unhealthy lives and unhealthy genes. I'm not too worried about the lifestyles, as long as they're not reproducing. In the event where there are unhealthy genes being passed on, I feel like a good old fashion epidemic will re-balance the tables at some point.
Or alternatively, we can start a new religion that doesn't tolerate unhealthy lifestyles, and at the same time pass more liberal gun ownership laws (meaning all people get guns), and at the same time invest in larger prison systems to hold the new wave of murderers... you know, there are many ways to deal with this "problem". It will sort itself out.
Of course in the meantime, there's that pesky rising health-care cost problem. Socialize it? ;) Lol, just kidding. Although, I think we need to incentivize preemptive health care. Private profits and western medicine's obsession with treating the symptom but not the cause is a real problem here.
There is simply No Free Lunch by noahmckinnon · 2012-12-14 11:27 · Score: 1

You can't cheat Death, etc.
Confused by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-14 11:30 · Score: 1

I remember reading twenty years ago that by now the population would be so big that we couldn't possibly feed everyone, now there is too much food? I also remember hearing that we would be out of oil by now too.
Why is it the "experts" seem to always be wrong?
1. Re:Confused by SternisheFan · 2012-12-14 17:47 · Score: 1
  
  I remember reading twenty years ago that by now the population would be so big that we couldn't possibly feed everyone, now there is too much food? I also remember hearing that we would be out of oil by now too.
  Why is it the "experts" seem to always be wrong?
  The wrongness of the experts is an effect of global warming.
  There are answers to all of the problems of this life on the planet. We just don't know what they all are, yet.
Pumpkin... by epp_b · 2012-12-14 12:12 · Score: 1

That's modern
medicine. Advances that keep
people alive that should have died
along time ago, back when they
lost what made them people.
Thank you .... by Monoman · 2012-12-14 12:44 · Score: 1

Captain obvious. No shite!

--
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Re:Suicide Booths & Death Panels by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-14 13:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

We already have death panels. They're called insurance companies.
How did our species survive the 90s!? by artor3 · 2012-12-14 15:06 · Score: 2

According to this graph, in 1990, there were 120k deaths per 100k people amongst the 0-6 day age group alone. I could have sworn that there were at least a few children that survived the decade.
1. Re:How did our species survive the 90s!? by flargleblarg · 2012-12-15 11:12 · Score: 1
  
  According to this graph, in 1990, there were 120k deaths per 100k people amongst the 0-6 day age group alone. I could have sworn that there were at least a few children that survived the decade.
  
  120k deaths per 100k people? How's that work?
Re:I'm not surprised by KarlIsNotMyName · 2012-12-14 20:33 · Score: 1

Is that God talking to the phenomenon that is evolution?

--
We are all God's parents.
Re:Darwin was right. by KarlIsNotMyName · 2012-12-14 20:37 · Score: 2

The easiest thing to do, is just stop reproducing. At least stop reproducing at these rates. We don't need for every couple to breed, one in ten could do us just fine for a couple of generations. Yes, there's the problem that the elderly depend on the young, but the biggest problem of all, is how many of us there are. We experience Earth's limited resources as more limited, the faster we consume them.
And I'd much rather see people not be born, than be born and then die a slow and painful death.

--
We are all God's parents.
WOW!!! by Evtim · 2012-12-14 20:59 · Score: 5, Interesting

The most wasteful system ever devised by human is suggested as a "tool we invented to understand and control how limited resources are used"?
The system that burns hydrocarbons instead of using them only for organic synthesis (plastics, medicine). The system that resulted in planned obsolesce? The system that...I am lost for words.
There is only one sensible thing in your post - the word "believe" There is no other way to support this inhuman, irrational, wasteful socioeconomic system that to accept it is faith....
1. Re:WOW!!! by fredprado · 2012-12-15 05:53 · Score: 1
  
  You are confusing Economy, a science, with Capitalism, an economic system. Even so Capitalism is far from be wasteful and even though it is far from perfect still the best economic system devised by mankind. It more than doubled the lifespan of humans, and greatly improved the quality of life of the average people. Unfortunately it has been distorted more and more into crony capitalism, in the last decades, due to the extreme economic power corporations gathered, but that is another discussion, and has nothing to do with the silly idea that "burning hydrocarbons" instead of using them exclusively for synthesis is a bad thing.
2. Re:WOW!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 11:57 · Score: 1
  
  Bullshit. Medicine doubled the lifespan of humans and technology improved quality of life. Capitalism was only there to make a profit.
3. Re:WOW!!! by fredprado · 2012-12-15 12:38 · Score: 1
  
  Medicine and technology developed more in the short period of Capitalism than in all the time before it. They also developed far more in Capitalist countries than in countries with other economic systems. Nothing moves more human beings than greed. I suggest the video bellow. It is quite illustrative:
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo
4. Re:WOW!!! by fredprado · 2012-12-15 13:54 · Score: 1
  
  Not necessarily, but more often than not, where there is strong correlation there is causation.
Not PC, but relevant by felixrising · 2012-12-15 02:32 · Score: 1

Remove natural selection from a species and watch it's gene pool deteriorate. Which leads to the moral dilema: given in vitro genetic testing, do we have a moral responsibility to test and either abort or rectify genetically borne diseases and problems. And who decides what genetic traits are desirable and what isn't in our offspring?
1. Re:Not PC, but relevant by Max+Threshold · 2012-12-15 21:49 · Score: 1
  
  These are difficult questions, but ones I think we must face. People call it "playing God" when we tinker with genes, but are we not already playing God every time modern medicine saves a life, or modern agriculture feeds the hungry? By all rights of nature, a significant percentage of our population shouldn't be here. I include myself in that; I'm so nearsighted that I wouldn't last a day in the jungle. And I'm going to pass my defective genes to my offspring. Sooner or later, we're going to have to deal with this.
2. Re:Not PC, but relevant by cardpuncher · 2012-12-16 00:07 · Score: 1
  
  Not PC and not relevant either.
  Society is also a genetic construct that has (co-)evolved. If the current shape of society results in a poorer survival rate for people, then either people will die out or people in a different form of society will eventually become more numerous. In any case, we won't know the evolutionary effect of a change in societal behaviour for many generations, so it's probably better to optimise for present well-being rather than contemplate sacrificing (other) people for a hypothetical benefit to future generations that most likely will not occur and which none of us will see.
Do non-market systems change things? by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · 2012-12-15 03:47 · Score: 2

The biggest richest EU countries have some flavor of public health care (different in all of them, of course). They have universities and scientists: the US isn't the only place capable of inventing drugs and cures.
Do they have single-dose medicines or curative therapies that the US doesn't?
"Threescore and ten" by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · 2012-12-15 03:51 · Score: 1

Was the number in Biblical times.
1. Re:"Threescore and ten" by Paracelcus · 2012-12-17 09:07 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, they wished that the could live that long, but they almost never did!
  
  --
  I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Re:Darwin was right. by KarlIsNotMyName · 2012-12-16 14:00 · Score: 1

Well, the resources on Earth are what it is all about now. Before we get to rely on resources in outer space, to get to that stage, we probably have to solve a lot of problems with the resources available down here.
If you mean there is more space on the planet, I disagree. We're not the only species. And each other species is linked with multiple species. The more we displace and interefere with other species, the more we alter the entire ecology of Earth. It's better the less space we occupy.
And quite a large number of people live in poverty with each day a struggle to get enough food to go on to the next day. While a lot of others do completely mundane work that leads to no progress at all. And some are just stuck in fundamentalist religious socieities, where you're only supposed to stick to centuries old dogma. What we need are more people educated, more people doing research, yes, doing the science and work towards new and better solutions. But we could do far more, with fewer. Especially as we're not consuming various limited resources at a rate far beyond what they are renewed at.

--
We are all God's parents.