Bloomberg examines three trends among the older generation: Working longer, dying earlier and sicker in between.
Why are things starting to go south for my generation? It is the real question. I have a few ideas. You could never prove anything but does the term “Woodstock” mean anything to you? My generation is the one that introduced free love and recreational drugs into the American way of life. Maybe it is time to pay the piper. Promiscuous sex leads to all kinds of problems. The disease factor is one. There are more types of venereal disease out there than you can throw a condom at. For those under some age VD is the old term for STD. Some of them cause your mind to rot. Some can kill if untreated. That can’t be a good sign. Does that have anything to do with the rising levels of dementia? Then you have the simple stress set up in your emotional life when you look on a part of life the God reserved for lifelong relationships and you subject it to one night stands. It is interesting that there is another link on Drudge talking about the wild life of the Rolling Stone staffers. Guess how old they are now.
We have also been free in our criticism of the pharmaceutical companies to the point where they are not putting much seed money into certain types of life saving research. I understand that the old antibiotics are not working on new strains of bugs and there are few new ones in the pipeline. Are you surprised? The executives in those companies have feelings to. They would prefer not to get sued or called greedy so go ahead and die early. You can always accuse the morticians of the same faults.
It could also be that we have reached a plateau in improvement of life expectancy. If you look at the chart provided you see a steady improvement from 1980 with three evenly spaced pauses. The pauses are minor compared to the major drop in mortality.
Meanwhile life is good. Just in case, I am ready to go. There is little I can do about it anyway.
homo unius libri
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