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Alcohol Causes One In 20 Deaths Worldwide, Says WHO (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Alcohol is responsible for more than 5% of all deaths worldwide, or around 3 million a year, new figures have revealed. The data, part of a report from the World Health Organization, shows that about 2.3 million of those deaths in 2016 were of men, and that almost 29% of all alcohol-caused deaths were down to injuries -- including traffic accidents and suicide. The report, which comes out every four years, reveals the continued impact of alcohol on public health around the world, and highlights that the young bear the brunt: 13.5% of deaths among people in their 20s are linked to booze, with alcohol responsible for 7.2% of premature deaths overall. It also stresses that harm from drinking is greater among poorer consumers than wealthier ones. While the proportion of deaths worldwide that have been linked to alcohol has fallen to 5.3% since 2012, when the figure was at 5.9%, experts say the findings make for sobering reading.
the rate of death attributed to alcohol has been falling since 2012. Sounds like a better trend to me.
And the public don't care, as long as its not them....
Hmmmmm.
The incessant 'alcohol kills' fear mongering appears to have gained much traction on Slashdot
https://science.slashdot.org/s...
The above appeared on 23rd August of this year.
Please, Slashdot, this is a geek site, not one for the Puritans to scare the public into avoiding alcohol together !
Don;t forget all those who suffered for being drunk to score... This really levels it all out...
95% chance you won't die from alcohol.
The glass may be half empty but the bottle is half full.
What? Alcohol causes more deaths than firearms?!
Well, there's one way to fix that - ban alcohol! Make it illegal, and alcohol-related deaths should pretty much stop happening.
What could possibly go wrong?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Alcohol may cause 1 in 20 deaths, but it probably play a part in about 1 in 20 conceptions, so overall its a zero-sum game
Slashdot - News for nerds
List of causes of death by rate
I think that there are more pressing causes of death, which might increase the need for a drink.
Undid some funny moderation, because I think there are a couple of people worldwide who like to use every opportunity to ban alcohol, even though it is not really a leading cause of death worldwide.
It's a poor mechanism for population control. It kills those in their 20s disproportionately often. This means the resources used to raise and educate these people are wasted since they died before they could make a sufficient contribution. A more cost efficient mechanism would target those past retirement or the very young or ideally prevent conception in the first place. As others have pointed out, alcohol may even increase the number of unplanned pregnancies, making the overpopulation problem worse.
Ban life. Ban it now. If we get rid of all life, there will be no more death.
This "study" is farcical. Alcohol may contribute in some tangential ways to some of the deaths mentioned in it, but to say that alcohol is the cause of death in 5% of all deaths is patently absurd.
And, really, it's the ABUSE of alcohol that is more appropriately to blame for the vast majority of alcohol-related disease and injury.
But, don't let reason and fact get in the way of your politics.
I would argue that alcohol is the best socialising drug on the planet. See how unrelaxed societies are in which alcohol is banned. So, how many wars have been prevented because the opposing leaders had some drinks together? :)
So 76% of alcohol related deaths are men? This is a clear sign of discrimination, we need more women dying from alcohol related deaths!
What I learned today from Slashdot: human beings have no free will, but a molecule can be deemed "responsible".
It kills those in their 20s disproportionately often because those in their 20s tend to die rarely from cardiac arrest, cancer or a stroke.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm sure the overall effect is positive.
I don't doubt this is a major factor but it doesn't invalidate the point. The base rate for death is senescence related and we should compare to the base rate.
Oh come on, the subject line begs for a question mark.
Let's say for whatever reason, opium and alcohol switch places historically and instead of alcohol being the dominant legal drug, opium derivatives become legal.
Like alcohol, the dominant forms of opiates that remain legal are low-concentrate varieties, such as smoking opium or low-strength tinctures -- in the same way that beer and wine are popular, although like spirits, morphine or heroin also exist, but are consumed mostly diluted cocktail style. For the most part, opium is sold in regulated stores and always in well-known concentrations by a well-regulated industry.
Society has recognized for centuries the problems of opium use, but as its deeply ingrained in culture only the US ever tried to ban it during Prohibition which was a complete failure. Alcohol is seen as much worse, and society is presently engaged in a "alcohol crisis" fueled by over-prescription of therapeutic alcohol and black-market alcohol which is tainted.
Would we more or less be in the same place we are now, kind of turning a blind eye to the dangers of opium -- relying mostly on the culturally ingrained "rules" for to not overdose regularly?
It seems to me that most people ignore the large-scale problems with alcohol availability and despite cultural acceptance it's probably way more dangerous than we ever consider. Millions of people are alcoholics and millions more are borderline functional alcoholics and there are vast social problems associated with alcohol, like drunk driving, violence, domestic abuse, etc.
I think there have been attempts to quantify the risks associated with the various varieties of psychoactive substances and almost always alcohol and tobacco come out 1 or 2 with opiates further down the list maybe behind barbiturates, which society mostly has avoided as a long-term crisis or black market drug.
The latter is kind of interesting considering the popularity of Seconal and Quaaludes in the late 1960s and 1970s -- it's somewhat surprising that with the surge in illciit lab-made fentanyl and other "research chemicals" that there hasn't been a parallel surge in illicit lab-made Quaaludes or Seconal.
This article is poorly titled. It should probably be, "Alcohol Abuse Causes 1 In 20 Deaths." Just about anything out there has the potential to be misused and abused.
wmd 'weather' now a contender.. cease fire stand down.. it's safe to say too much of almost anything can kill us?
Eliminating factors that taint the result is crucial. Else bullshit like "people lived healthier lives in the past because way fewer died of cancer" becomes fashionable. Yes, fewer people died of cancer in medieval times, but mostly because other diseases that we have eliminated today got them first.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah but who says?
Well, I remember when I was in my teens and 20s, I died from alcohol every weekend at least twice. (Living in the EU, so nothing illegal)
So that might influence the numbers a bit.
Now I die every weekend from cardiac arrest because of the fact that my kids behave like I used to do. So that influences the numbers also a bit.
The stroke is the cause of the little death or La petite mort. That has not changed that much over the years. (Or what stroke where you talking about?
I am litteraly dying.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Person 1: it was the drink that killed my winston
Person 2: oh he was an alcoholic?
Person 3: no he got hit by guinness truck
Thank you robin williams
so they rolled in the suicide stats if there was a bottle nearby at time of death?
fishy! junk science! fake news!
Since when does alcohol cause suicide?
And as most of the world has socialized healthcare of some kind, it is an expensive form of population control. Other conspiracy theories float the rise in cancer and cheap high-saturated fat foods as methods of killing off the old who have outlived their usefulness, but when you look at the cost of cancer treatments and survived heart attacks, it doesn't look so good. Even the US has medicare for the elderly, it's not really helping anyone to kill them off in any of these ways.
It's probably just people making bad decisions, evidenced most by the relatively high number of young people affected.
Surely the better thing to quote, is one where we're currently turning a blind eye, high fructose corn syrup. So acceptable its given freely to children too young to make an informed decision. Wasn't it New York that tried to make "Super sizing" sweet drinks illegal for health reasons and was blocked?
http://www.who.int/elena/bbc/ssbs_adult_weight/en/
"Overweight and obesity are major risk factors for a number of chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and certain types of cancer (1-3). Once considered a problem only in high income countries, overweight and obesity are now dramatically on the rise in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in urban settings (4)....sugar-sweetened beverages are generally consumed quickly and do not provide the same feeling of fullness that solid food provides (10) such that consumers tend not to reduce intake of other foods sufficiently to compensate for the extra calories provided by sugar-sweetened beverages (11). Excess calories contribute to overweight and obesity as they can be readily converted to body fat and stored within various tissues. Overconsumption is likely exacerbated by an increase in the serving sizes of sugar-sweetened beverages over the last several decades"
The leading cause of death, is being born.
*ducks*
If the percentage and total number is down its a good thing, yes?
We need to make people safe. We need to ban alchohal, guns, and private ownership of automobiles. There is no reason for anyone to own their own 3000 lb automobille that can be used to kill innocent school kids. Also we need to ban dating for kids under the age of 18 because it leads to child exploitation. Also cigarettes need to be banned. Also we need to ban over eating, we should have the state provide everyone with a food allotment. There is no need for anyone to consume 4000 kcal a day. Also studies have shown people not getting enough sleep are a detriment to society. There we need to have camera in bedrooms veryify people are getting enough sleep at night and are not using their alloted sleep time to listen to illegal subversive people like Alex Jones.
We just need to enact sensible legislation to keep us safe
Germany will not like the oktoberfest buzzkill!
Life is reason for 10 of 10 deaths. Stop life and nobody needs to die anymore.
This really the issue, progressive fuckwits support regressive taxes on others. It's blatant hypocrisy, and it reveals their bigotry. Black people smoke, so a cigarette tax is a great way to punish them for being black. Poor people drink,cheap beer, so punishmtjem for their unhip beer. Urban conservatives drive,cars, so double hateful tax that. That tax is worse on rural peoples? Excellent! Punish their otherness.
What? Alcohol causes more deaths than firearms?!
Duh. People have greater access to alcohol so this should surprise no one. That said it depends on exactly when you measure it. During a war firearms clearly are the bigger danger. Also I'm not especially worried about someone pointing a beer at me even if they are angry.
Well, there's one way to fix that - ban alcohol! Make it illegal, and alcohol-related deaths should pretty much stop happening.
Comparing regulation of a mild recreational drug to regulation of a purpose built weapon is a fairly ridiculous comparison. That said there is plenty of evidence that prohibition did have positive effects regarding mortality despite arguably being bad policy. Likewise regulation of firearms in countries that took the matter seriously has been shown to reduce mortality from firearms. Again it might or might not be good policy but it does have a measurable effect on mortality rates.
I agree with this however it does not address my point. The comparison I am making is between a world with and without alcohol abuse. Call them A and B respectively. Consider in both cases the 'age of death' distribution. In A, there is a higher proportion dying for those in their 20s compared to B. For clarity, I am not making a comparison between A and C, a world where the other diseases do not exist, since this is the wrong base rate. We get the result in part because alcohol is less of an 'old people cause of death' than competing causes of death. I could make the same point with 'death by unbiased lottery'. Since it does not discriminate by age like most fatal diseases, it would be a poor means of population control compared to the existing population control. As before I'm using the word 'poor' with regard to economic prosperity not morality.
More people would get older without alcohol. Ok. But take a look at the population pyramid of your country and ask yourself whether you'd really want that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Alcoholism should be labeled as a more serious problem and people who get DUI's many times have to get multiple one's before receiving and significant legal action. We should use technology to make sure people convicted of DUI's do not have the ability to get behind the wheel of a automobile before going through a alcohol treatment program. Because alcoholism is so entrenched in societies we can't expect people in government with similar addictions to address the lack of proper actions to reduce these deaths.
nineteen more to go
Alcohol is responsible for more than 5% of all deaths worldwide, or around 3 million a year, new figures have revealed
I think I speak for everyone when I say "WHO cares?".
Don't worry, I'll see myself out
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Overpopulation is a leading cause of global warming
Alcohol has never been used for population control. In point of fact, the government tried to ban it. When that didn't work out, they reverted to regulating the sale and distribution of it and added additional taxes on it, all of which makes it harder to afford.
Add in the number of pregnancies that result from drunk sex and alcohol has probably produced more lives than it's ended.
Those in their 20s also tend to take more risks than their elders, and don't yet recognize when they're too drunk to be doing that, leading to stupid stunts and drunk driving.
My original post in this thread was about controlling the population pyramid. I already pointed out the value in population control after retirement in this first post. The rest of our discussion came from my concern that twenty-something is too early to die because it hurts the population pyramid, being a productive age with many productive years still head.
Is that you Plato?
Hell no. I want dad to kick off so I can get my inheritance, just like he did from granpa.
I had a stroke reading your comment.
Saying something is the "cause of death" means it was the primary, direct cause of a person's death.
The only cases in which alcohol is the cause of death in humans have been from alcohol poisoning.
If you look at the death certificate for someone killed in a DUI crash, the cause of death is usually "blunt force trauma resulting in excessive internal bleeding." It is not "alcohol."
Making the claim that 1 in 20 deaths are CAUSED by alcohol is making the claim that 1 in 20 deaths are from alcohol poisoning.
WORDS... MEAN... THINGS...
Correlation is not necessarily Causation!
This was the original submission:
Alcohol Causes One In 20 Deaths Worldwide-Says who?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
frontal lobotomy.
I thought people under the influence of alcohol caused deaths. I didn't realize that alcohol had become sentient and had been murdering people.
Not only that, alcohol doesn't drink itself. It's not responsible for ANYTHING!
Alcohol consumers, using bad judgement, are the responsible parties with respect to the deaths cited.
There seems to be some sort of moral obligation for guys to chase tail. The fact that marriage rates are declining in all the industrialized nations is being attributed to men simply being to lazy and selfish to do their part for society.
But, seriously, dating is awful! At least for men like me. I will never be tall enough, nor muscular enough (no matter how hard I work out, as it is a matter of genetics), to be naturally attractive to women. I see them swarm the hunks, get used and abused, and then cry about being unable to find good men. There aren't enough hunks to go around! They know this, but that doesn't make them want me.
So I am supposed to fight this uphill battle, settle for unattractive women who don't appreciate me because of how unattractive I am, and then work my ass off to keep them happy so they will let me breed with them. Then, they can just divorce me and compel me to pay them a lifelong salary in return for nothing.
This stick is just too damn short. It makes no sense to put this much effort into something with so little payoff, and that just fucks me over in the end anyway.
If I spend my free time playing video games instead, nothing bad happens. I get to blow off steam and have fun, do things with friends who actually respect me, and have enough money left over to invest in long-term savings.
With incentives like that, it is no wonder that men are opting out. It is simply the most rational thing to do.
..and it's not necessarily having to do with your health. Seriously, the W.H.O. comes off as more of a political activist organization than it does anything else, they just leverage health issues to further their overall agenda. Not interested in anyone telling me how I should live my life.
Indirectly. A lot fewer people of both sexes would be able to get laid if it wasnâ(TM)t for alcohol, and not just due to its intoxicating effects, but also due to the social mingling opportunities that alcohol has been enabling for thousands of years.
Just in case a friend needs it : Alcoholics Anonymous.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Please replace this article with something about sugar, so I can look down my self-righteous nose at people.
Those damn Methodists, always starting wars and shit.
It drives me nuts when journalists don't provide a link to the actual report. The methodology involved is vitally important to determine if it's believable or not. Also, what's the peer review process from a WHO study? Is there any?
These are the sorts of questions good journalism should be providing. Something entirely lacking in the article.
Than a Frontal Lobotomy!
Now that pot is available legally one way or another in almost every state, this will go down fast.
Sorry, Iâ(TM)m confused. What are you saying isnâ(TM)t illegal or immoral? If you mean shoving your Genetalia into someone elseâ(TM)s face without their consent, thatâ(TM)s definitely both illegal and immoral. What else could you possibly mean?
Cars kill more people.
Most deaths from alcohol are caused by cars.
It's like blaming alcohol for all the deaths caused by tanks. The tank fired the weapons, the amount of alcohol imbibed is only a contributing factor. Or like blaming the need to use lungs to breathe when it's the smoke that's killing you.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
and hippies. There's multiple and well sourced quotes from Nixon talking about it. And plenty of discussion around how Marijuana policy was used to get rid of Mexican temp workers once the growing season was over. This is why a rich white guy pulled over with some pot goes to drug rehab and a poor black guy jail.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
We'll continue to focus on banning AR-15s instead, despite them being an absolute drop in the bucket.
Nixon definitely did weaponize drug policy as a tool for dealing with his enemies -- hippies, left-wing types and minorities.
My problem is that I don't think drug policy really changed all that much when this happened, the only real difference was that post 1960s there were just a LOT more ordinary white people doing drugs, mostly marijuana.
But before that, drug policy had historically been used to suppress minorities too -- Chinese, Blacks, Mexicans. Sure, Nixon made it worse but it wasn't like it was great before that. In many ways, I think what Nixon made worse was not the racist aspect of it, but the concentration of authority and creating the DEA, making anti-drugs much more of an intensive effort.
Yes, fewer people died of cancer in medieval times, but mostly because other diseases that we have eliminated today got them first.
That and almost no ability to perform any diagnosis other than palpation of tumours close to the surface, or ones that were visible to the naked eye (melanomas and such). But then any cancers that werediagnosed would never be effectively treated anyway.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
These are just bots replying to each other, and this one hasn't been updated to reflect the latest topic. It was expecting 'treason' to be the topic.
100% chance Trump dies in prison a traitor
No doubt, but only after he fully serves both of his terms as President.
Too bad, so sad.
This part above just reminds me of something from when I was much younger. For about a year or so I worked in a warehouse doing general labor crap. A few of the guys and I would go out and have a few drinks every Friday at the bar down the road. We only ever went for an hour or so as just sort of a cool down and hang out at the end of the week. Some would have money issues and excuse themselves from several of the hang outs, even though others would offer to buy a drink or two just to have the hang out time.
Then there would be 1 or 2 that were struggling to pay rent, fill their car with gas, etc.... and they'd finally get a break, or work overtime. Suddenly they'd go out and buy expensive drinks, appetizers, dessert, etc... and the next week complain about money again. I never understand the choices people make about money.
Alcohol Causes One In 20 Deaths Worldwide, Says WHO
Alcohol CAUSES? Really?! I could believe that alcohol was a factor, but not a cause. It is like the drunk driving statistics. Person A hits and kills person B. Person C was a drunk passenger in Person B's car... and THAT is counted as a Drunk Driving death.
Just fucking stop with the agendas already. All these bullshit claims do is give a reason to people to act irrational. Just stop.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Ah, of course. I wonder, are the bots actually being run by opposing factions? Or by the same group/person?
The one that needs to die is the moron that modded that funny.