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US Near Bottom In Life Expectancy In Developed World
Hugh Pickens writes "Louise Radnofsky reports that a study by the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine has found U.S. life expectancy ranks near the bottom of 17 affluent countries. The U.S. is at or near the bottom in nine key areas of health: infant mortality and low birth weight; injuries and homicides; teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections; prevalence of HIV and AIDS; drug-related deaths; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; chronic lung disease; and disability. Americans fare worse than people in other countries even when the analysis is limited to non-Hispanic whites and people with relatively high incomes and health insurance, nonsmokers, or people who are not obese. The report notes that average life expectancy for American men, at 75.6 years, was the lowest among the 17 countries and almost four years shorter than for Switzerland, the best-performing nation. American women's average life expectancy is 80.8 years, the second-lowest among the countries and five years shorter than Japan's, which had the highest expectancy. 'The [U.S.] health disadvantage is pervasive — it affects all age groups up to age 75 and is observed for multiple diseases, biological and behavioral risk factors, and injuries,' say the report's authors. The authors offered a range of possible explanations for Americans' worse health and mortality, including social inequality, limited availability of contraception for teenagers, community designs that discourage physical activity such as walking, air pollution as well as individual behaviors such as high calorie consumption. The report's authors were particularly critical of the availability of guns. 'One behavior that probably explains the excess lethality of violence and unintentional injuries in the United States is the widespread possession of firearms and the common practice of storing them (often unlocked) at home,' reads the report. 'The statistics are dramatic.'"
Seems to be the thing our government is so intent on doing. It's all because of the guns! Forget about the 20k suicides per year.. Forget about our piss poor health care system.. forget about the fact that we take immigrants in and treat them better than our own.. Forget about the fact that 60% of American are obese. It's all the guns fault
Seems more likely that the cause for the difference is the lack of swimming pools in Switzerland, which are more likely to kill a member of their owners family than a firearm.
But hey, let's not let perspective keep us from wiping our asses with our founding documents.
The country's owners is the Federal Government. The citizens are clueless sheep who will do what the Fed tell them to do on MSNBC,CNN, etc.
Here's a hint, if you want your point of view treated seriously, DONT LIE when you support your position. The guys that wrote this are nothing more than fancy schmancy gun grabbing retards.
They don't care about you having a gun, they care about guns being used to kill people.
You seem a touch defensive on the whole gun issue.
We have to be, the powers that be, are trying to use that school shooting as an excuse to try to remove freely legal gun ownership.
Geez, I can't believe that shooting is still dominating the news so much, sheesh the CO movie theater thing was fading by now it seems. I don't understand why this one is such a big deal and causing all the talk about restricting legal gun rights vs the other shootings.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........