No, the obvious change is the discovery of antibiotics.
Most of the pathogen-caused deaths go away. People live longer. What's left is diseases of age -- cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's.
If we don't get new antibiotics soon, the graph in 50-100 years time will resemble the graph from 1900: lots of elderly folks dying of antibiotic-resistance bacterial infections, XDR-TB ripping its way through the poor, and so on.
However, I find the 50% decline in accidental deaths heartening.
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andrewducker) wrote2012-06-23 12:00 am
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Most of the pathogen-caused deaths go away. People live longer. What's left is diseases of age -- cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's.
If we don't get new antibiotics soon, the graph in 50-100 years time will resemble the graph from 1900: lots of elderly folks dying of antibiotic-resistance bacterial infections, XDR-TB ripping its way through the poor, and so on.
However, I find the 50% decline in accidental deaths heartening.