Hits & Misses – 2009/10/9
Paper to hire medical marijuana critic.
Vanity hurts: 60% of women have worn types of shoes that put them at risk for chronic foot pain.
Bad economy may be good for your health: Mortality dropped and life expectancy increased during the Great Depression.
Just what we need. A Marijuana critic!
A bad economy is good for our health? It is interesting that, as countries develop economically, longevity tends to rise. But at some point additional economic development leads to greater amounts of unhealthy consumption (too much food, too little physical activity). I believe that is one of the reasons the U.S. slightly lags in life expectancy.
Interesting about the Great Depression.
The work on business cycles and mortality is interesting but in no way supports the causes mentioned in the article. The press release even says that. And, as Devon points out, the conclusions offered up run counter to the overall evidence for economic progress and mortality.
According to the University of Michigan press release, the Granados/Roux work analyzed age-specific mortality rates due to six causes of death that composed about two-thirds of total mortality from 1920 to 1940. Two thirds of mortality isn’t total mortality. The causes included were cardiovascular and renal diseases, cancer, influenza and pneumonia, TB, motor vehicle traffic injuries, and suicide.
Note that by and large these are not causes of death that affect children, and that reductions in infant and childhood mortality were especially large in the first half of the 20th century. So, they may be leaving out data on total mortality that has a big effect on their outcomes. Fragmentary evidence on work-related deaths suggest that on the job deaths fell from 61 per 100,000 in 1913 to 4 per 100,000 in 1997. And on the job deaths clearly are correlated with industrial production. For more data see MMWR http://www.cdc.gov/Mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4822a1.htm
In earlier work (2005), Granados says that “associations appear to be specially strong for traffic mortality in the second half of the century.” Which makes sense because, well, people started buying cars then.
Then there is the comment that “the impact of unemployment fluctuations on cancer mortality seems to be weak, though statistically significant in 1954-1970.” It is not clear why a one or two year fluctuation in employment would affect cancer mortality given the long gestation of cancers. Perhaps it was better diagnosed or more likely to show up on death certificates then?
The press release specifically states that “the research did not include analyses of possible causes for the pattern.” One therefore wonders why the authors are quoted at length speculating about causes with a yada yada yada mantra of political correctness.
They say that economic expansions may be associated with higher mortality due to to working conditions, stress, and lack of sleep. The say that people drink and smoke more to relieve the stress. Also there is more atmospheric pollution (which they did not measure), and more on the job injuries (which they also did not measure), an increase in social isolation and a decrease in social support (which they did not measure).
Why point to what people eat and the stress of work without first looking at the effects of some of the major medical advances? In 1900, infectious diseases were the leading cause of death, accounting for 32 percent of the total. Pneumonia and influenza accounted for 12 percent of deaths all by themselves. Better public health measures and better nutrition, combined with vaccines for typhoid (1917), diptheria (1923), Pertussis (1926), tentanus (1927), flu (1945), and polio (1955) may have helped. The first sulfonamide drug was discovered in 1932. Penicillin didn’t become widely available until Pfizer learned how to mass produce it during World War II. Simple vitamins weren’t widely available until after the 1930s and 1940s.
At the same time, smoking rates took off. Does increased stress at work has more to do with population health than these advances?