23 Ways You’ll Die

Buzzfeed’s “Top 23 Ways You’ll Die” highlights a curious issue around mortality. The top three causes of death – heart disease, cancer and stroke – are failing equipment while the next couple – auto accidents, self-inflicted harm, accidental poisoning – are social and mental.

I don’t remember the exact numbers, but even if we found complete, lasting cures for the top three killers, then the average human life span might go up a decade or so, to 85 or so. Really, even if we found a cure for most everything, we’d all probably still top out at around 100, with quite a few people dying along the way from the causes further down the list (e.g. struck by dog?). By no means am I questioning the value of an extra decade of life for one person or a whole society. What I am trying to tease out is the fact that our bodies just, well, stop after a while. The leading cause of death is our own biology, not disease.

The problem is that our entire medical paradigm is built around the idea of “cures” and not preventions. The very idea of insurance is based on the premise that I might get sick or hurt, which is why insurance was originally for catastrophic injury and illness, not doctors visits etc. Now that we understand health care is as much prevention and anticipation as it is curing and restoring, shouldn’t our system of both care and research change? The question is astronomically complex and involves the third-rail health care debate I’d rather not latch onto at the moment. But even if we cured every cause on that list, most of us would would die around 100 from a legion of tiny internal failures.