Good News Update by Kip Hansen
Science is a wonderful thing. As time moves on, in a single direction, Science, as an endeavor, discovers new things and improves our lives. Sometimes though, things get better, and we don’t know why.
That’s the news from Gina Kolata, Health & Science reporter at the NY Times, in an article dated JULY 8, 2016, titled A Medical Mystery of the Best Kind: Major Diseases Are in Decline. [ here ].
The Good News:
“…Hip fractures, [incidence]… rates have been dropping by 15 to 20 percent a decade over the past 30 years.”
“The exemplar for declining rates is heart disease. Its death rate has been falling for so long — more than half a century — that it’s no longer news. The news now is that the rate of decline seems to have slowed recently.”,
“Dementia rates, too, have been plunging. … a 20 percent decline in dementia incidence per decade, starting in 1977.”
“Until the late 1930s, stomach cancer was the No. 1 cause of cancer deaths in the United States. Now just 1.8 percent of American cancer deaths are the result of it.”
“Rates of disease after disease are dropping. Even the rate of ‘all-cause mortality,’ which lumps together chronic diseases, is falling. And every one of those diseases at issue is linked to aging.” [which is increasing as the baby Boomers age].
The cause of this news? In each case, the definitive answer is:
“Dr. Steven R. Cummings of the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute and the University of California at San Francisco. When asked [regarding hip fractures] what else was at play, he laughed and said, “I don’t know.”
That answer, a basic “we don’t really know”, is the same for each of the declining diseases – medical advances just don’t fully explain the declines.
Kolata’s coverage is a breath of fresh air in science reporting, where we are more usually subjected to yet-another alarming report of impending personal disaster . [Cue music: “It Ain’t Necessarily So”] caused by vague “chemicals and toxins” [sic] in our environment.
Sometimes [Cue music] we just “got to admit it’s getting better”.
# # # # #
“One of the problems with successfully dealing with threats is that people start believing that there is no threat.” – Thomas Sowell,
Well, the timing seems to me to implicate tobacco use more than anything else I’m aware of . . ; )
It was announced on the news just last night that the AIDS epidemic no longer a public health issue in Australia
Hmmm … announced, but, that is the status as presented by the health authorities, and, there may be ulterior, political reasons or even budgetary (money) reasons for doing so.
They may even have a new classification for it, in which case it is now a shell game.
Just goes to prove that CAGW is even more of a threat that anyone, and I mean anyone had imagined.
Yes, we live in a Mary Poppins world, practically perfect in every way. And when those effects of CAGW finally kick-in in the latter half of this century (you know, the effects like temperature and sea level rise, the effects of severe weather, I mean the ones that haven’t shown up yet, you know, because like, we’re saving them up in the deep oceans, or whatever) these disease rates which have been declining until now will really skyrocket, beyond what anyone had predicted or even imagined! Hold on to your seats. 😉
How about the root cause of our increased, healthy lifespan is prosperity? Prosperity is an almost completely unmitigated good. The greenies don’t get that at all.
Prosperity (global) would get my vote! A slightly warmer, CO2 enhanced climate will ensure that prosperity. A blessing, that history confirms. GK
Through in some non government interference capitalism and the sky is the limit.
As bad as we sometimes think things are, on balance the human condition continues to improve. We humans have more and better food than ever. Live in generally more sanitary conditions with the vast majority of us consuming cleaner water. Have better health care and more extensively applied preventative medicine measures. And perhaps, most importantly, live in a time of relative peace which even if it doesn’t seem that way, allows the vast majority of us to avoid the depravations, filth, pestilence, and communicable diseases that war always brings with it.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904106704576583203589408180
‘Sometimes [Cue music] we just “got to admit it’s getting better”.’
http://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/Nature_Rebounds.pdf
But apparently that’s not as sexy as exploding schoolchildren and raining polar bears, etc. Truth in advertising be damned when you’re trying to create an emotional demand for your services.
See page 7 which discusses “global greening” due to added CO2 and warmer temperatures. It’s surprisingly positive.
My generation was hopefully near the last to see the near eradication of many fatal diseases, better nutrition, improved living conditions and numerous medical advances, Two in my high school class
(Texas ,1952) died of polio as did the baby down the street. We probably all had sublethal exposures and some alive still have effects. Also improved sanitation removed the spread of many parasites still a problem some places in the 1960s. What is called poverty today would have been mostly classified then as sometimes sparse but adequate diet.
Parasites still are a serious problem in much of the world and their study as a discipline seems to be declining, although there have been many advances with new technologies. My major mentor was a parasitologist who understood the biological wonder and great potential of these often unseen biologically clever animals that affect all species. He was the director of a project that discovered a major disease of oysters that killed more than any oil spill. Their effects are often ignored in major ecological studies and restoration efforts.
Glad to have lived this long (see first sentence), but sad to have seen so much lost history.
“As time moves on, in a single direction”
That’s the way it seems, but has it been proven?
Here’s one factor. More people can afford wine.
http://www.naturalnews.com/054538_champagne_Alzheimers_prevention.html#
And I don’t want to hear any niggling from science-denying paid shills of Big Pharma and Big Water.
This is absolutely undeniable totally proven settled science from experts.
But aside from that, we’re still doomed.
Here’s one reason: more people can get wine.
http://www.naturalnews.com/054538_champagne_Alzheimers_prevention.html#
And I don’t want to hear any niggling from science denying paid shills of Big Pharma and Big Water.
This is absolutely undeniable totally proven settled science from experts.
But aside from this, we’re doomed.
“Dementia rates, too, have been plunge”
There’s still a lot of AGW “believers” on the list, though.
Here’s one reason: more people can get wine.
University of Reading Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences Professor Jeremy Spencer said: “These exciting results illustrate for the first time that the moderate consumption of champagne has the potential to influence cognitive functioning, such as memory.”
Previous studies from the same university found that drinking two glasses of champagne per day could help your heart and circulation, and even decrease the risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease.
Another recent study showed that the resveratrol in red wine can help prevent age-related memory declines. The study, which comes out of the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, points to the positive effects of red wine’s resveratrol on the hippocampus.
(This is from the Natural News website. For some reason I cannot post a link.)
And I don’t want to hear any niggling from science denying paid shills of Big Pharma and Big Water.
This is absolutely undeniable totally proven settled science from experts.
But aside from this, we’re doomed.
Cofrestrfa Brofiant Cymru
Rhosllanerchrygog78
Here’s one reason: more people can get wine.
University of Reading Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences Professor Jeremy Spencer said: “These exciting results illustrate for the first time that the moderate consumption of champagne has the potential to influence cognitive functioning, such as memory.”
Previous studies from the same university found that drinking two glasses of champagne per day could help your heart and circulation, and even decrease the risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease.
Another recent study showed that the resveratrol in red wine can help prevent age-related memory declines. The study, which comes out of the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, points to the positive effects of red wine’s resveratrol on the hippocampus.
(This is from the Natural News website. For some reason I cannot post a link.)
And I don’t want to hear any niggling from science denying paid shills of Big Pharma and Big Water.
This is absolutely undeniable totally proven settled science from experts.
But aside from this, we’re doomed.
Sorry about the repetition. For some reason, my comments were not shown, so I got the impression that something had gone wrong with the system.
Parasites are still a serious problem. For example politicians who give $500,000/20 minute speeches paid for by people who want 100x return in grants and trade deals, often paid in U.S. taxpayer dollars.
How about international banksters who can’t make much from profitably run old U.S. industries, who once needed bank financing to get started, but paid off their loans decades ago,, and can self-finance expansions today? So banksters decided to fund startups in China which offered huge returns, because factories there had super-low costs, primarily in labor wages and minuscule medical-care costs for 20-30-something aged young and vigorous workers, vs.U.S.’s 40-50-60-something aged worn and tired out workers.
The U.S. international-trade deficit has been based on our reliance on Middle East, Latin American, and African mineral energy imports, combined with increased imports of cheap Asian goods, and declining U.S. factory-product exports for products (laid down in 1940’s UN founding vision) not supplying Americans’ massively-expanded desire for factory-produced goods.
With fracking and massive coal reserves, we could be independent of foreign-source mineral energy, and working with Canada and Australia, we could obtain all the mineral resources we want to make all we need and want in consumer products. Americans have been hornswaggled by “experts” who say, “The deindustrialization of America, the closure of making things in America is best, by which we mean is best for us top 1%ers, screw the American workers who make things..”
The fact that Dr Cummings does not know does not mean that nobody knows. ..
synergy effects, placebo effects, shift of focus?
Why is it that when something bad happens, or when they think something bad might happen in the future, it’s all automatically blamed on anthropomorphic global warming. But when something good happens the scientists just shrug their shoulders and say that they just don’t know.
Not everyone is pleased.
The Humanity haters are beside themselves.
Consider this 1988 quote from Prince Charles,
the “genius” who would be king.:
.
What a lovable guy.
I’ve got a less cheery explanation.
I live in one of the “wealthy countries” mentioned in the comments. And for the past 30 months I’ve been without a personal physician, although I have both government and corporate medical coverage. I’ve been on a waiting list for a personal physician for 18 months, and am told it may take three to five years more to reach the front of the line. I’m not holding my breath though, since I have an official medical file that runs over 700 pdf pages (just up to three years ago), that is full of errors, that legally can only by corrected by the physician I fired 30 months ago (in another jurisdiction), is out of chronological order, and is mostly unsearchable because the first 22 years of it consist of hand-scribbled notes, and because even recently reported lab results are so poorly printed as to be unreadable by OCR.
But hey! Here’s the good news. Since my chronic gastrointestinal, neurological, and urological diseases (the first two resulting from long-term mismanagement of the third) have not been monitored for 30 months, I’m statistically disease free…Hurray! And since I’m getting on in years, I could well go to my grave perfectly “healthy”.
So let’s not forget the essential caution about statistics: garbage in garbage out!
I’m 69 years old. My father and grandfather all died at a young age from heart attacks. And I look just like my father. I think cholesterol tests and statin drugs are part of the reason for a longer life. Plus aerobics help too. My first retirement was from the Army. Running was a habit they got me into — still run. Another thing that helps, I think, is many of us guzzle coffee, which is the “Elixir of Life” (but it does do a job on one’s stomach now and then). However, I feel that, when your time’s up, you’re times up, no matter how healthy you are.
While the last of the “greatest” with a small “g” generation dies off overdosed with a plethora of synthetic drugs in their systems, the baby boomers forced to take their health into their own hands or die off in the numbers now effecting many in our society, we like Japan, the healthiest nation in the world because it practices the higher levels of preventive and alternatives medicines, are changing our medical system and the food chain. Taking Chemo and Radiation are like voting for the lessor of two evils. you still get evil, actually you die about 97 percent of the time.
Well, I’ve been “on” about quality of drinking water lately, especially since the Gold King Mine rupture, and I do have some general results which I shall back up by figures:
Googling:
“water supply getting better” yields about 8,630,000 results (0.61 seconds)
“water supply getting worse” yields about 1,360,000 results (0.73 seconds)
Conclusion: Good news travels slower than bad news even when there is more of it.
This seems to reinforce your basic premise that bad news abounds; I’m still concerned about our water.
Perhaps applicable here, “Evan Sayet – Kindergarden of Eden”
Many subjects touched on including the fact that many more ‘unintelligent’ people are able to survive today compared to even 75 years ago due to a great number of factors.
Improved standards of living explains all.