Archive for February 2nd, 2002

Deaths for all age groups

Posted in Uncategorized on 02/02/2002 09:17 pm by Daniel Hagan

Deaths for all age groups (combined) from 1990-1998 in the US:

Rank Cause Fatalities
1 Heart Disease 6,557,252
2 Malignant Neoplasms 4,763,868
3 Cerebro-vascular 1,370,924
4 Bronchitis Emphysema Asthma 902,511
5 Unintentional Injury and Adverse Effects (i.e. accidents) 831,814
Motor Vehicle Traffic was #1 subcategory – 380,223 [45.7%]
Firearm was #12 subcategory – 11,349 [1.4%]
6 Pneumonia & Influenza 742,355
7 Diabetes 505,676
8 Suicide 277,741
9 HIV 271,877
10 Liver Disease 227,758

Source: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, courtesy of the CDC.
I’m sure it’s considered rude to say so, but I’m much more interested in the development of effective prevention and management of cardio-vascular problems & cancers than HIV. In the nine most recent years that data was available, heart disease and “cerebro-vascular” (which I assume means strokes) killed 7.9 million people, and cancer (“Malignant Neoplasms”) killed 4.7 million. In the nine years shown, motor vehicle accidents killed more people than HIV/AIDS did.
If you’re wondering what got me started, it was this story about Bono and Bill Gates. Sure, they want to help people, but it would seem to make sense to focus on the things that are killing off our own population.