ARE WE LIVING LONGER?

Shannon News, 18 May 1928, Page 2

ARE WE LIVING LONGER?

LONGEVITY FALLACY. ; (By Sir Bruce Bruce-Porter). We are informed with justifiable pride in the latest health report that the expectation of life at birth has now reached the stage when it is 17 years greater than that of 50 years ago. If I am to judge by the opinions of many laymen with, whom I have Bpoken to-day, the real significance of this statement is not widely understood.

When we leave the birth period and approach that which deeply concerns the men and women of middle age, we find at 50 years that the expectation to-day has not increased more than 17 weeks during over a eentury. That great statistician, Dr. Louis Dublin, of the Metropolitan Assurance Company of New York, explored the figures very thoroughly and found that while in 1789 the expectation of life at 50 was 21.16 years, in 1920, over 130 years later, it was only 21.54. It may be said these figures applied to America, but having in mind the close resemblance of our respective physical health, standards in the Great War there can be little doubt that our general increase in expectation at 50 would be- found the same. Thanks largely to education of the mothers by welfare workers, the mortality of * children has been reduced during 50 years by one-half. But, so far, these saved lives, while adding 17 years to the average of their group, have not made an appreciable difference to the expectation at middle age. BENEFITS NEUTRALISED. In other words, though each individual to-day has a much better/chance of escaping the maladies of infancy, the' average life of those who survive this danger period is not appreciably longer. 8 It is sad to change a pleasant delusion into an unpleasant fact, but it must be done if the public are to realise'that the need for health education is greater than ever, since it is clear that there must be some very potent factors at work which are neutralising the beneficent work of our great public health services.

The disappearance of epidemic diseases like smallpox and typhoid, and improved housing, should in themselves have produced an effect, but the wear and tear of industrial life and the rush of modern social life, added to the sophistication of our food supplies, must be exercising a grave effect on our race. We can only hope that as popular education of the mothers has saved the lives of the children, similar health education. of young adults will save ethem many years of useful and active existence when they reach middle life.