Posts Tagged ‘lung cancer’
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane”*…
We tend to encounter data about public health in the form of averages over the population as a whole. But as a recent study published in The Lancet painfully demonstrates, the underlying reality is much more complicated– and alarming…
The differences in U.S. life expectancy are so large it’s as if the population lives in separate Americas instead of one.
Nearly two decades ago, a team of researchers published the landmark “Eight Americas” study, which examined drivers of U.S. health inequities between 1982 and 2001 by dividing the U.S. population into groups based on geography, race, income, and other factors.
A new research study, published this month by the University of Washington and the Council on Foreign Relations, revisits that landmark research project, adding two new “Americas” to account for Latino populations.
This new study finds that U.S. life expectancy disparities have grown over the last two decades between 2001 and 2021, with the differences between the best and worst of those “Americas” increasing from 12.6 years in 2000 to 20.4 years in 2021. COVID-19 exacerbated this divide, but gaps in longevity had already been growing before the pandemic hit…
“The 10 Americas: How Geography, Race, and Income Shape U.S. Life Expectancy,” from @thinkglobalhealth.org. Both this summary article and the underlying paper are eminently worth reading in full.
* Martin Luther King, Jr.
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As we unpack unfairness, we might send preventative birthday greetings to Ernst Wynder; he was born on this date in 1922. An epidemiologist and public health researcher, he is best remembered for his pioneering work in identifying the link (in 1950) between smoking and lung cancer.
Wynder devoted his career to the study and prevention of cancer and chronic disease, publishing hundreds of scientific papers. Through the 1950s and 1960s, he worked at Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. In 1969, he founded the American Health Foundation. In 1972, he founded the academic journal Preventive Medicine and served as the founding editor.
“I’ll give you my one-handed flail when you pry it from my cold, dead hands”*…
From the one-handed flail…
to the flamethrower…
… “10 Crazy Weapons That Are Still Legal In The U.S.”
* variation on the NRA’s slogan, popularized by Charlton Heston: “I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands”
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As we re-read the Second Amendment, we might recall that it was on this date in 1998 that a tobacco company executive– Steven Goldstone, RJR Nabisco chairman and CEO– acknowledged the health risk of tobacco products under oath to Congress for the first time.
Concern about the safety of tobacco dated back to the 19th Century, and links to lung cancer emerged in the early 20th. But it was in 1950, with the publication of Richard Doll‘s research in the British Medical Journal, that a close link between smoking and lung cancer was scientifically established. Many studies quickly followed, confirming Doll’s findings and establishing the addictive quality of nicotine. Still, as recently to Goldstone’s testimony as 1994, seven tobacco company executives had sworn under oath that nicotine was not addictive.
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