Life expectancy in US up, deaths not, CDC says

Life expectancy in US up, deaths not, CDC says

news.yahoo.com

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe, Ap Medical Writer – 40 mins ago

ATLANTA – U.S. life expectancy has risen to a new high, now standing at nearly 78 years, the government reported Wednesday.

The increase is due mainly to falling death rates in almost all the leading causes of death. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2007 is nearly three months greater than for children born in 2006.

The new U.S. data is a preliminary report based on about 90 percent of the death certificates collected in 2007. It comes from the National Center for Health Statistics, pa

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Last year, the CDC said U.S. life expectancy had inched above 78 years. But the CDC recently changed how it calculates life expectancy, which caused a small shrink in estimates to below 78.

The United States continues to lag behind about 30 other countries in estimated life span. Japan has the longest life expectancy — 83 years for children born in 2007, according to the World Health Organization.

The CDC report found that the number of deaths and the overall death rate dropped from 2006 — to about 760 deaths per 100,000 people from about 776. The death rate has been falling for eight straight years, and is half of what it was 60 years ago.

Heart disease and cancer together are the cause of nearly half of U.S. fatalities. The death rate from heart disease dropped nearly 5 percent in 2007, and the cancer death rate fell nearly 2 percent, according to the report.

The HIV death rate dropped 10 percent, the biggest one-year decline in 10 years.

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Some good news for once.

This makes me think about how long the generations will live. I think the Boomers will live an average of around 90 years, Xers maybe 95 years, the Yers (my generation) an average of a century, and people born later than 2000 100 years plus.

Are we inching close to relatively immortal spans of 500, 1000 years?

Life expectancy is a little confusing. All deaths, even if your one day old, either bring up or bring down the life expectancy.

People are under the impression that hundreds of years ago, people didnt' live long. Plenty did, look around you will find people in their 90s in a graveyard. But infant mortality was so high, it would bring the numbers way down.

I believe what this article is saying is that due to the campaign about parents being aware of falling deaths of children, and things falling on them, it has been enough to actually bring the life expectancy up.
that is the way I read it.

Maybe, however more people are also living past 100, so that's not the only reason why.

Isent the overall cancer 5 year survival rate up to almost 70%? Things are looking very good in the fight against cancer. Some individual forms have survival rates well into the 90% range like testicular cancer where virtually all cases are curable of course minus one testicle. It just proves that we already have a cure for cancer; early detection. Early detection is why cancer survival rates are going up and up.

Even HIV is now considered to be a chronic condition as modern drugs basically stabilize the disease; you won't get better but you wont get any worse. Look at Magic Johnson for instance.

[edit on 19-8-2009 by ChrisF231]

Originally posted by Donnie Darko
Are we inching close to relatively immortal spans of 500, 1000 years?

i think we are probably fairly close to the maximum life expectancy. by the age of 100, in your natural body, you're pretty decrepit. i suspect that we'll jump from our present level to 500 or 1000 fairly suddenly with the development of life extension technologies.

Originally posted by pieman

Originally posted by Donnie Darko
Are we inching close to relatively immortal spans of 500, 1000 years?

i think we are probably fairly close to the maximum life expectancy. by the age of 100, in your natural body, you're pretty decrepit. i suspect that we'll jump from our present level to 500 or 1000 fairly suddenly with the development of life extension technologies.

I think there will probably be nanotreatments that will fight the free radicals and you can just take them like an elixir from the Fountain of Youth.