Health Scare Story Du Jour

From LBC:

Britons are more likely to die early than people in most wealthy nations, research suggests - and experts are warning the gap is widening.(1)

A study has found the UK is now 14th out of 19 Western countries for life expectancy.(2) In 1990, Britain ranked tenth in a league table - with Alzheimer's disease, cirrhosis of the liver and drug use disorders being blamed for our falling position.(3)

The research was published as Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt prepares to address a "shocking underperformance" that is costing 30,000 lives every year.(4) The report compares death rates, disease and health risks in 1990 and in 2010. In these 20 years, life expectancy has increased in the UK - by an average of 4.2 years to 79.9 years - but it has failed to keep pace with other nations.(5)

While we are living longer, we are experiencing longer periods of ill health and disability.(6) The UK is now below average compared with 18 other countries on many important indicators.(7)

1) Gasp! We're all going to die!

2) And out of about two hundred countries in the world, we rank..?

3) Longer life expectancy = more Alzheimer's; they can "blame" cirrhosis of the liver all they like, that doesn't mean it's on the increase (nowadays they just fall over themselves to diagnose something as such where they wouldn't have done twenty years ago); drug use is stable or on the decline and most health problems are because drugs are illegal and hence contaminated.

4) None of this "costs" lives, it is merely the flip side of postponing everybody's inevitable death. If you dive into a frozen pond and pull somebody out before they drown, clearly you have saved somebody's life and deserve a medal. But if you put terminally ill people on brilliant but expensive life support machines which will prevent them from ever dying, no matter how vegetative their state, you have not saved a life at all, you have merely postponed their death. And the money you've spent might have been more usefully spent on preventive medicine.

5) Aha, here's the crux, we are doing better than we were, but other countries have improved more.

6) Inevitably, the longer people live, the more likely they are to "experience longer periods of ill health and disability", that's the period between natural life expectancy and actually dying. As erstwhile German health minister Norbert Blüm once said, a century ago, people were pretty pleased if they made it past forty, nowadays they're whining because they only live until they're seventy.

7) Yes, and we are right at the bottom of the table of the top 14 countries. So what?