In 1993, the World Bank sponsored the 1990 Global Burden of Disease study carried out by researchers at Harvard University and the World Health Organization. This study provided the first comprehensive global estimates of death and illness by age, sex, and region. It also provided projections of the global burden of disease and mortality up to 2020. The study and its projections have been crucial in national and international health policy planning. Colin Mathers and Dejan Locar have now updated the projections based on 2002 data on mortality and burden of disease and published their results in the international open-access journal PLoS Medicine.
They predict that between 2002 and 2030 under all three scenarios life expectancy will increase around the world, fewer children under the age of 5 years will die, and the proportion of people dying from non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and cancer will increase. Although deaths from infectious diseases will decrease overall, HIV/AIDS deaths will continue to increase. Despite this increase, 50% more people are predicted to die of tobacco-related disease than of HIV/AIDS in 2015.
By 2030, the three leading causes of illness will be HIV/AIDS, depression, and ischemic heart disease in the baseline and pessimistic scenarios. In the optimistic scenario, road-traffic accidents (which increase with socioeconomic development) will replace heart disease as the number 3 killer.
Is there any possibility [1] people will get better at driving — [2] get bright enough to stop smoking?
I just can’t wait until cars drive themselves. People will never get any better at driving. Ever.
[2] get bright enough to stop smoking?
Somebody suggested that governments should encourage smoking because of its great economic benefits. Most governments get a huge income from tobacco taxes and just as the smokers are about to start drawing their pensions, they die, saving the governments a lot of $$$.
just as the smokers are about to start drawing their pensions, they die, saving the governments a lot of $$$.
Who can live on a social security anyway?
After spending most of my working life at startups which eventually went tits up, and ending up with practically nothing to show for it, investment-wise, dying before I retire is the best I have to look forward to anyway.
I only wish I could smoke at my desk so I could share the joy with my co-workers.
[edited: comments guide]
I think one of the reasons why so many people are uptight, mean spirited, edgy and just flat out nasty nowadays is because nobody smokes anymore. I know I’m not as laid back as I was 10 years ago when I quit.
#2, your only flaw is that you failed to mention the cost when the government decides to pick up the expense of medical treatment for the self-inflicted illness that will result.
#4 Hey hey…
I took Drivers Ed in high school 10 years ago with an instructor and practiced everyday for months… I got my license… I still suck at driving too (highway / freeway)!
(Then again…I never had the need to drive much after getting my license, growing up in NYC.)
I’m reminded of the most depressing sentence I ever heard.
“The baby boomers of the early 1950’s will be the geriatric boomers of the 2020’s” and there you have my whole life, soup to nuts.
#4 In some state they hand you the drivers manual and send you on your way to study for the test.
to think that in 2029,
A meteor will pass the earth(between earth and moon), and if the Magnetic field bothers it just ENOUGH that in 6 years return, It will have a GREAT posiblity of hitting…
#7
Actually, I read a study years ago now, that put that myth to rest, so to speak. First of all, everyone dies of something. Among those who don’t die of trauma at a young age, nearly everybody uses something like 75% of the total medical care they ever receive in their last 2 years of life. Think about it.
Does it matter much if they die of lung cancer at 55 or of Alzheimer’s at 85? Not really. The medical costs wind up being about the same. Less if they don’t spend the last 10 years in a nursing home. You get the idea. The conclusion of the study was that smokers save the government money overall.
And yes, there is the odd person who smokes 3 packs a day until they are 97 and then has the nerve to die of an unrelated cause, but we’re talking about entire populations, not rare individual cases.
Regards,
DAve
People probably do drive better today than before. They have been shown to fly better thanks to Microsoft.
While they may cure most diseases, they still haven’t figured out how to stop or cure death. So while not as many people die from common infections, that just leaves more to eventually die from old age.
IF,
You solve the Death issue, then I would suggest solving the BIRTH issue FIRST…
We still have more people BORN then dieing…
I like how this got completely derailed yet it keeps going on.
It really doesn’t matter since the world is coming to an end, at least in each of our life times it will.
Does it bother anyone that by making us so safe, that we are being caged. It might be a nice soft cage or a hard cage, but it’s still a cage. I thought everyone believe in questioning authority, being their self and doing their own thing, but everywhere we turn everything that can be twisted in a health cost or health care is another reason to regulate us. Now they want to regulate how much we eat, saying if we eat 1500 calories or less we can live longer and be healthier. Or regulate our ‘Carbon Footprint’, do without breakfast and it’ll save 60lbs a year. And to think all this time we were sending food over to Africa, so they could have more children we were just increasing the Humanity’s “Global Carbon Footprint”.
Sounds more like the governing class just wants to control and regulate us in a early grave.
My first deleted post!
This is gonna be a good day.
Before any of the rest happens we’re going to fry from Global Warming (TM) first anyway.
The saddest thing about bad drivers is that driving a full sized truck on a freeway for hours at a time is one of the most important foundations of an acceptable standard of living.