From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Wed Apr 16 2003 - 12:50:17 MDT
Mez writes:
> Let me summarize the CDCs statistics for US causes of death in 1921.
> In descending order of incidence:
>
> CAUSE % of ALL DEATHS
> Heart Disease 14%
> Pneumonia 9%
> Tuberculosis 9%
> Stroke 8%
> Cancer 7%
> Nephritis 5%
> Accidents 5%
> Diarrhea & enteritis 4%
> Premature birth 4%
> Diphtheria 1-2%
>
> These stats are available at
> http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/statab/lead1900_98.pdf
It's curious that these figures only add up to about 66% of the cases.
Either there are a large number of individual causes of death, each of
which account for fewer than 1% of the total, that make up the remainder;
or else there is a large OTHER cateogory where cause of death was unknown.
If the latter (which I think is more likely) then possibly some of
the increase in our current causes of death might be due to improved
diagnostic methods which reduce the number of unknown cases and assign
them to other categories. If approaching 1/3 of the causes of death in
1921 were not identifiable then moving those cases to other categories
could cause a significant change in the statistics.
Hal
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