The Morning File / How we die: the very latest on the most final
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Oh, you again.
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January is always The Morning File's favorite time of the year, as we look forward to the slush, the scraping, the sliding and, most especially, the annual report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the leading causes of death in America.
Some shy away from death as much as a reassessment, but not us. We embrace it as one of the most interesting things we'll ever experience in life.
We also like those various religions' notions that after dying we'll come back as either some much-improved version of ourselves (not hard to do), or as a cool animal (please let it be a cheetah) -- or, if God really appreciates something we do at the end, we'll get to hang out in heaven with many, many virgins.
We can live with any of those scenarios, or rather, die for them.
But first, let us discuss how we get to that point. As you may have read, the chance of our dying by homicide has grown significantly smaller, which -- based on an unscientific sample -- many people among the living seem to view as a good thing. And much of the responsibility, as usual, lies with that wide swath of people born between 1946 and 1964.
"With the baby boom generation aging and more vulnerable to disease, the population generally is at less risk for homicide," Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox told USA Today.
Perhaps that means people stricken with cancer, stroke or Alzheimer's aren't as able to commit murder as they once were, as it's so hard to persuade their exhausted, exasperated caregivers to become accomplices in the plan. ("Just take your meds and get back in bed, Henry, and we'll talk in the morning about icing that ex-boss of yours, assuming you remember.")
It is so hard to encounter someone inclined to kill you these days (even harder with the death last year of Jack Kevorkian) that for the first time in 45 years homicide is no longer among the 15 leading causes of death, based on the 2010 statistics just released. Of 2.4 million U.S. deaths that year, there were 16,065 homicides -- 734 fewer than the year before.
Somewhat ironically, considering how worried we still get in dark alleys in the middle of the night (and don't ask what we're doing in a dark alley at 3 a.m. -- just trust us, it's important) it's way more likely we'll kill ourselves than have someone else do it. There were more than twice as many suicides (37,793) as homicides in 2010 -- and keep in mind, that was not even a year in which the Steelers lost the Super Bowl.
All of that pales in comparison to heart disease and cancer -- the Koufax and Drysdale of death -- which are so far out in front of all other causes it's ridiculous. Heart disease killed 595,444 people and cancer claimed 573,855, and everything else was at least 400,000 behind.
We always figure if we can avoid cancer, we've got a good chance of lasting a long time. That's why we hold onto many old, stained, torn, Race for the Cure T-shirts that we wear to aid the fight by promoting cancer awareness -- that and the fact that we're too cheap to buy new T-shirts.
(Whenever we pass another person wearing one of those ubiquitous shirts at the same time, we always give a big thumbs-up and smile of recognition while making the "C" sign with our thumb and forefinger. For some reason, we seem always to be regarded as an idiot while doing so. People just don't seem as friendly these days.)
The other reason we enjoy the annual mortality report from the CDC is its focus on life span.
When we see that the average life span is now 78.7 years, it reminds us we're not even close to dying. We've got a long time to tackle the ol' bucket list: driving the speed limit down Green Tree hill; viewing a Manor Theater film end to end without interruption; driving through Oakland without a college student stepping in front of the car.
And that life span estimate is just for the kids born in 2010. We who have already cleared the early obstacles should do even better. The report expects someone the age, race and sex of this Morning File author to make it to age 81, a prime number indeed.
That means another 28 annual mortality reports to write about. We can hardly wait -- unless, of course, that time as a cheetah or surrounded by virgins gets in the way first.
First Published January 23, 2012 12:00 am
