Through a Glass, Half Empty

An interesting report from The Scientist:

Chronic diseases world’s no. 1 killer
Chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease are now the biggest killers around the world, a new report by the World Health Organization found. Accounting for more than 60 percent of the deaths worldwide in 2008, chronic diseases have surpassed the major infectious killers such as malaria and AIDS as the most deadly human diseases. And though infections and poverty-related issues still dominate death counts in the impoverished countries of Africa, chronic diseases are expected to tip the mortality scales there as well by 2020…

They make it sound like a bad thing.

Talk about a glass half empty. What this excellent news means is that we have made such progress in medical science that world deaths by chronic disease outnumber deaths by infection etc and the same will soon apply even in the poorest countries. And these chronic diseases are the diseases of old age: in other words, most people are now living to such a ripe old age that that’s what they’re dying from.

Until medicine advances far enough that we can enjoy unsullied youth indefinitely, people will have to die from something: there will always be some “number one killer” to worry about. Let’s not make it sound like we’re going backwards, when we’re going forwards.