From: proberts@informix.com (Paul Roberts)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Medical research has not "added 20 yrs to our lives"
Date: 11 Jan 93 22:23:29 GMT
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.
Originator: proberts@moose

GP = Greg Popken
PR = Paul Roberts

Of someone's eventual demise...

GP> Which will be approx. 20 yrs later thanks to medical research.

PR> Statistically speaking, medicine has done little to increase life
PR> expectancy.

GP> Paul, were did you get this from? My estimate of 20 yrs is from a 
GP> U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services report.

OK, here's the reference I promised:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

            TRENDS IN DEATH AND DISEASE AND THE CONTIBUTIONS
                          OF MEDICAL MEASURES

                      John B. McKinlay, PhD  (1)
                      Sonja M. McKinlay, PhD (2)
                      Roger Beaglehole, MD   (3)
           
  Chapter to appear in Handbook of Medical Sociology, Fourth Edition,
  Edited by H.E. Freeman, and S. Levine, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1986.

  We are grateful to Barney Gage, Judy Pierson, and Karen Yuhas for their
  valuable assistance in the preparation of this chapter.

    1. Director, New England Research Institute, Watertown, MA, and
       Professor of Sociology and Research Professor of Medicine, Boston
       University, Boston, MA.

    2. President, New England Research Institute, and Associate Professor of
       Community Health, Brown University, Providence, RI.
               
    3. Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Auckland University School of
       Medicine, Auckland, New Zealand. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------  

Tempting though it is to type in the the whole document (31 pages, plus 8
pages of tables and diagrams), I'd better limit myself to a few quotations
from it:

 p4: " 3.5 percent probably represents a reasonable upper-limit estimate 
       of the total contribution of medical measures to the decline in 
       infectious disease morbidity in the United States since 1900. "

     " ... any recent improvements with respect to these major chronic
       diseases are still erroneously to specific medical interventions. "

 p9: " In summary, it is unlikely that the medical measures have had a
       major effect on population morbidity data. "  

p21: " ... the recent decline in chronic disease mortality may, like
       like the earlier decline in deaths from infectious diseases,
       be due primarily to environmental or personal hygiene changes
       rather than to traditionally defined medical interventions. "

p22: " We remain perplexed by ... the spirited attempt made by some
       policy experts, usually in the name of humanism, to shore up
       and amplify the modest contribution of medical measures . "

p23: " Progress against [AIDS] lies in public health measures (protection
       of the blood supply, reproductive education in schools, the use
       of condoms, [...]) not in the development of expensive and
       probably ineffective `magic bullets'. "

... well, if I find I have time of my hands, I may type in some more.

Paul


        
                                       
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