But We Live Longer Today

But We Live Longer TodayAuthor: R. L. WysongThe media, medical community, academia, drug companies, schools, parents, and friends all chime in with the same mantra about how blessed we are that medicine extends our lives. People are as confident that medicine increases life span as they would be if they had a fistful of aces. But when everyone smiles and agrees, they are usually wrong and progress weeps. The force field of "truth" surrounding this popularly held "but we live longer today" meme exempts the foundations of modern medicine from criticism regardless of their shortcomings. After all, if everyone gets to live into their seventies, on average, as opposed to dying in their twenties as a result of medical progress, what's a few shortcomings? (That would, according to the previous chapter, require the word shortcoming to mean the equivalent of five jetliners of people dying each day from medical intervention, and at least ten times that number being damaged or maimed.) Average lifespan (take note of the word average) was indeed shorter in the distant past. But why is the question. For one, life used to be staggeringly difficult. People weren't pointing and clicking sitting at a computer back then; they were hunting, gathering, laboring, and were prey themselves. With the advent of agriculture, toiling in fields from sun up to sun down with little to eat but moldy, mycotoxin-laden bread during many seasons, was a sure trip to an early death.

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