And I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. With oil prices skyrocketing, the Iraq war spiraling downward into an ever more dismal abyss,

the economy falling apart, and to top it all off the specter of global climate crisis ready to finish us off it would seem that the last thing we want to hear is that people are living shorter lives. But that appears to be just what is happening.

A new study shows that there are large parts of our country where the average life span is getting shorter. The main culprits seem to be “side effects” of our lavish life styles. Lung cancer from pollution, diabetes and heart attacks from eating too much food. Depressing, but revealing.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

The researchers looked at differences in death rates between all counties in US states plus the District of Columbia over four decades, from 1961 to 1999. They obtained the data on number of deaths from the National Center for Health Statistics, and they obtained data on the number of people living in each county from the US Census. The NCHS did not provide death data after 2001. They broke the death rates down by sex and by disease to assess trends over time for women and men, and for different causes of death.

Over these four decades, the researchers found that the overall US life expectancy increased from 67 to 74 years of age for men and from 74 to 80 years for women. Between 1961 and 1983 the death rate fell in both men and women, largely due to reductions in deaths from cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke). During this same period, 1961–1983, the differences in death rates among/across different counties fell. However, beginning in the early 1980s the differences in death rates among/across different counties began to increase. The worst-off counties no longer experienced a fall in death rates, and in a substantial number of counties, mortality actually increased, especially for women, a shift that the researchers call “the reversal of fortunes.” This stagnation in the worst-off counties was primarily caused by a slowdown or halt in the reduction of deaths from cardiovascular disease coupled with a moderate rise in a number of other diseases, such as lung cancer, chronic lung disease, and diabetes, in both men and women, and a rise in HIV/AIDS and homicide in men. The researchers’ key finding, therefore, was that the differences in life expectancy across different counties initially narrowed and then widened.

What Do these Findings Mean?

The findings suggest that beginning in the early 1980s and continuing through 1999 those who were already disadvantaged did not benefit from the gains in life expectancy experienced by the advantaged, and some became even worse off. The study emphasizes how important it is to monitor health inequalities between different groups, in order to ensure that everyone—and not just the well-off—can experience gains in life expectancy. Although the “reversal of fortune” that the researchers found applied to only a minority of the population, the authors argue that their study results are troubling because an oft-stated aim of the US health system is the improvement of the health of “all people, and especially those at greater risk of health disparities”

So there you go, the rich get rich cause the problems and then don’t let the poor people in on any of the solution. Wee! Sounds like great fun.

Human beings like to pride themselves on all the fun and interesting ideas they have. I am one of them, when I read a great book of hear a great song I am uplifted and find beauty in the human condition. But we have forgotten one important fact, nature couldn’t give a shit. Thats right, natural selection, physics, chemistry, the sun, the moon, gravity (nature), doesn’t give two warm turds about humanity.

If every human on this planet were to vanish suddenly it wouldn’t mean a hill of beans to some bacteria living around a thermal vent on the bottom of some ocean. Some dogs might care for a couple of weeks, but they would soon move on to running in packs returning slowly to wolf like behavior.

The sad honest truth of it all is the only thing on this planet the really truly cares about people, are other people. And they can’t even be bothered to do that very often. When people talk about “saving the earth” and “protecting the environment” they really mean “keep this planet habitable to human beings.”

If a global war, or giant climate crisis killed off all the humans, and most of the rest of the species on this planet, the earth would shrug for a couple of million years, and nature would just keep on trucking. Some sort of squid or bacteria or tiny mouse would survive and keep right on evolving to meet whatever climate shows up. Human beings however are a highly complex, and therefor highly fragile species that could easily be wiped out by any number of things.

We are dependent on so many natural things, food, air, water, predictable climate, that if any one of these systems gets out of whack the rest soon fall apart. The next time you hear some hippy environmentalists squawking on and on about how you have to save this owl, or this river, or stop global warming, remember they aren’t really trying to help an owl, or a river, or the climate, they are trying to help YOU.