Lifespan crisis hits supersize America

[Guest guest]

The reason that the population is so unhealthy is due to lack of information

and lack of choices. The people are brainwashed into buying what Big

Biz corporate interests and Gov.Inc. are selling them on,... not what

is healthy, but what is healthy for those people's bottom line. They are also

consistently brainwashed into voting against their own self interests.

 

" Trust Us, we have your best interests at heart " .

Toxic Sludge is good for you!

Toxic Food is good for you!

Toxic Water is good for you!

Toxic Vaccinations are good for you!

Toxic Drugs are good for you!

Toxic Radioactivity is good for you!

Toxic 12 Hour Workdays at low wages are good for you!

Toxic Manipulation of information is good for you!

Toxic Politicians are good for you!

Toxic Rules against civil liberties are good for you!

Toxic Big Business Monopolies are good for you!

Toxic Wars are good for you!

Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., ad nauseum.

 

F.

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1307954,00.html

 

Lifespan crisis hits supersize America

 

Robin McKie, science editor

Sunday September 19, 2004

The Observer

 

Bloated, blue-collar Americans - gorged on diets of fries and burgers,

but denied their share of US riches - are bringing the nation's steady

rise in life expectancy to a grinding halt.

 

Twenty years ago, the US, the richest nation on the planet, led the

world's longevity league. Today, American women rank only 19th, while

males can manage only 28th place, alongside men from Brunei.

 

These startling figures are blamed by researchers on two key factors:

obesity, and inequality of health care. A man born in a poor area of

Washington can have a life expectancy that is 40 years less than a

woman in a prosperous neighbourhood only a few blocks away, for example.

 

'A look at the Americans' health reveals astonishing inequalities in

our society,' state Professor Lawrence Jacobs of Minnesota University

and Professor James Morone, of Brown University, Rhode Island, in the

journal American Prospect .

 

Their paper is one of a recent swathe of studies that have uncovered a

shocking truth: America, once the home of the world's best-fed,

longest-lived people, is now a divided nation made up of a rich elite

and a large underclass of poor, ill-fed, often obese, men and women

who are dying early.

 

In another newly published paper, statisticians at Boston College

reveal that in France, Japan and Switzerland, men and women aged 65

now live several years longer than they do in the US. Indeed, America

only just scrapes above Mexico and most East European nations.

 

This decline is astonishing given America's wealth. Not only is it

Earth's richest nation, it devotes more gross domestic product - 13

per cent - to health care than any other developed nation. Switzerland

comes next with 10 per cent; Britain spends 7 per cent. As the Boston

group - Alicia Munnell, Robert Hatch and James Lee - point out: 'The

richer a country is, the more resources it can dedicate to education,

medical and other goods and services associated with great longevity.'

The result in every other developed country has been an unbroken rise

in life expectancy since 1960.

 

But this formula no longer applies to America, where life expectancy's

rise has slowed but not yet stopped, because resources are now so

unevenly distributed. When the Boston College group compared men and

women in America's top 10 per cent wage bracket with those in the

bottom ten per cent, they found the former group earned 17 times more

than the latter. In Japan, Switzerland and Norway, this ratio is only

five-to-one.

 

Jacobs and Morone state: 'Check-ups, screenings and vaccinations save

lives, improve well-being, and are shockingly uneven [in America].

Well-insured people get assigned hospital beds; the uninsured get

patched up and sent back to the streets.' For poor Americans, health

service provision is little better than that in third world nations.

'People die younger in Harlem than in Bangladesh,' report Jacobs and

Morone.

 

Consumption of alcohol, tobacco and food can also have a huge impact

on life expectancy. The first two factors are not involved with

America's longevity crisis. Smoking and drinking are modest compared

with Europe.

Food consumption is a different matter, however, for the US has

experienced an explosion in obesity rates in the past 20 years. As a

result, 34 per cent of all women in the US are obese compared with 4

per cent in Japan. For men, the figures are 28 and 2 per cent

respectively.

 

'US obesity rates jumped in the 1980s and 1990s, and the vast majority

of the population affected by obesity had not yet reached age 65 by

2000,' state the Boston group. 'As the large baby boom cohort begins

to turn 65 in coming years, a stronger connection between obesity

rates and life expectancy may emerge.'

 

In other words, as the nation's middle-aged fatties reach retirement

age, more and more will start to die out. Life expectancy in the US

could then actually go into decline.