Causes of Death

The 20 Facts About Death You Need to Know

About 100 billion people have died since humans first walked the earth. The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years.

This fascinating article in Discover takes a look at some information about death you might not have been aware of, including the fact that no American has died of old age since 1951 (when the government eliminated that classification on death certificates).

One fact of particular interest to readers of this newsletter is that 80 percent of people in the United States die in a hospital.

Discover September 2006; 27(9)

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Dr. Mercola's Comment:

If you have been reading this newsletter for any length of time you know that merely the routine activity of conventional medicine can be enough to harm or kill you if you're not careful, so I'm not terribly surprised by the statistic revealing that 80 percent of Americans die in a hospital. Here are a couple more pertinent medical-related factoids from the article: Vultures in India are dying due to residues of the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac (better known as Voltaren) that they ingest when they eat dead cattle carcasses. More New York City residents die from suicide than are murdered. Here are a few more facts, not from the article: Death rate actually decreases when doctors go on strike, and deaths blamed on mistakes made with prescription drugs sold at pharmacies spike at the beginning of each month. Meanwhile, wild variations in health care quality lead to: 42,000-79,000 avoidable deaths 66.5 million avoidable sick days $1.8 billion in additional medical care costs The sad tragedy is that the conventional medical paradigm is fatally flawed. The United States is spending $2 trillion every year for a system that is based on disease management focused on drugs and surgery that fail to address the underlying cause of disease. Additionally, clever manipulation of the official government death rates conceals the fact that the conventional medical system, not heart disease or cancer, is the leading cause of death in this country. Yet, in all fairness, physicians themselves are not the primary reason, as they are under the pernicious influence of the multi-billion-dollar marketing umbrella of the drug companies. Our return on the massive investment in health care is profoundly poor. The bottom line is that the system is crumbling before our eyes. The very economic stability of the United States is threatened by this abuse. The good news is that the expense and misery can be powerful motivating factors to change. If you want to take a giant step toward better health for you and your family, and avoid becoming another death statistic, please stay tuned as I am currently testing the new version of Mercola.com that will allow you to actively participate in developing the largest collection of health truth this world has ever known. I have had a team of programmers working for many months to create a brand new Web 2.0 site that is based on the wildly popular Digg.com, which did not exist until December 2004 and now is in the top 25 Web sites in the world. We are actually alpha testing the program now and hope to have it available soon. Once completed it may be one of the single most important catalysts for the transformation of the health care system.

Related Articles:

Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death

Death by Medicine

Vaccination and Death