Thousands of years ago...

[trotsky]

...when no vaccines existed, there were no preservatives in our food, "big pharma" was millenia away from "poisoning" us, all cancer was treated "naturally" (no chemo or radiation), and there were NO DOCTORS....

the average life expectancy at birth was 20 years.

Just something to keep in mind.

[ixion]

1. Doctors helped to create Big Phrama

and I believe instances of cancer were far lower thousands of years ago, but it would be difficult to document that.

I don't really have anything against doctors, per se, but the healthcare industry that robs people blind for treatment -- from which these doctors profit handsomely -- is a scam.

[trotsky]

3. I'm not saying that there aren't problems with our system.

However for those who push the "natural" solutions and want to blame everything on "western" (i.e., evidence-based) medicine, I think having almost 4 times the life expectancy of Bronze Age citizens who had all-natural diets and no big pharma meds isn't too bad.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

32. Drs washing hands, antibiotics, new meds, medical tests &t reatment

Sanitary practices, antibiotics etc had nothing to do with increasing longetivy.
Nor did safer working conditions and new types of jobs that meant some people wouldn't be
working on farms.
Nor did anything else in history.

Its ALL VACCINES, ALL THE TIME.


Nothing like more evangelizing for vaccines.
After all, big pharma needs the help!

Pharmaceutical companies know best, right?

And the FDA doesn't have serious ethical issues, right?
(Just a group of FDA scientists writing letter to Obama transition team
begging for intervention).

[LeftishBrit]

43. ALL these things made a difference..

and the post you reply to didn't even mention vaccines. You don't think antibiotics are also a product of modern medicine and produced by pharmaceutical companies?

[LeftishBrit]

42. Obviously, the incidence of cancer was lower then,

Most people didn't live long enough to get cancer!

'the healthcare industry that robs people blind for treatment -- from which these doctors profit handsomely -- is a scam'

This has nothing to do with modern medicine per se. It has to do with how health care is delivered. Countries with 'socialized medicine' do not reject doctors and drugs; they make access to them independent of the ability to pay. Most such countries have higher life expectancy than the USA.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Your stats are skewed

Life expectancy was so low because infant mortality was so high. Once you got beyond infancy, you were more likely to have what we would term a "normal" lifespan. I've done genealogical research for 30 years, and in my family this has been the case. 1/2 to 1/3 of the children of large families died before they were 5 but the adults (barring accidents) lived to be between 60-80. In fact, I have one direct ancestor who died at age 106--in the 1680s. I can trace cancer in my family only back five generations, though, and I have made a point of finding out the health history as far back as I can.

[trotsky]

4. And why was infant mortality so high?

You can't remove part of the stats because you don't like them. Medicines, doctors, and especially vaccines have GREATLY contributed to reduce infant mortality - that's a fact.

On edit: BTW - of course you're not going to find "cancer" 100+ years ago. Unless it was something obvious like a giant bone or skin tumor, someone could die of cancer and it was unknown what killed them. No MRIs, no CAT scans, no x-rays.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. Oh yes you can find cancer 100+ years ago

I have the death certificates to prove it. One great great grandmother died of cancer of the uterus in 1883, for example.

As for me "not liking" the stats--I neither like nor dislike them. I'm just saying that you can't use the "average age" of people of long ago to imply that the reason their lifespan was short was because they died of illnesses as adults, which was my point.

And of course medicine has come a long way from those doctors whose main form of treatment was bleeding and purging. I wasn't arguing that, merely stating that just because the average age of a person 1000 years ago was 20 didn't mean that most people only lived to that age and then died of illnesses like cancer.

Another thing that has greatly reduced infant mortality is improving sanitary conditions. Several of my family members, especially the children, died in epidemics of "fever" that included typhoid fever and cholera.

[trotsky]

6. Of course you can!

That's because cancer has been with us forever. But you just aren't going to find it listed commonly as a cause of death going too far back (I just grabbed 100 years as a round number) because we didn't have the diagnostic tools we do now.

I'm just saying that you can't use the "average age" of people of long ago to imply that the reason their lifespan was short was because they died of illnesses as adults, which was my point.

Ah, so you were arguing against a strawman. Of course that's not what I implied - it's the BIG PICTURE here, which your point fails to address. Want to return to all-natural diets, no "big pharma" meds, no vaccines? Then expect to lose a LOT of children in infancy, and have our average lifespan drastically decrease.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

9. No straw man

Your point wasn't clear, that's all. I'm not arguing anything, just pointing out that the "average lifespan" statistic for earlier times is an average, and takes into account infant mortality.

Interesting historical point: John Adams's daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer in the early 1800s, and underwent a radical mastectomy without anesthesia. Doing a quick and dirty google search, I find that the earliest cancer surgeries were done in Egypt ca 1600 BC. Cancer research was done by individual MDs until after WWII, when a concerted effort was made by departments of public health to gather statistics so that, perhaps, it could be determined what factors are involved in cancer development.

[trotsky]

11. I'm sorry but you're the one trying statistical tricks.

As noted in my post below, today's 5-year-olds live almost 20 years longer than they did 100 years ago. That's completely stripping out infant mortality altogether, and still yields 20 more years of life. Yes, there are other factors, but the entire point of my post was that never in human history have we had less vaccination, less tainted food, less medicine, less of all the "evils" of modern society - but yet we lived the shortest lives then.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

33. lack of hospital care, Drs didn't wash hands back then, lack of meds

You guys defend all vaccines all of the time, don't you?

Is there any vaccine that you won't defend?

Swine Flu maybe?

[trotsky]

45. Your strawman attacks are so tiresome.

When you are ready to discuss issues rationally and without attacking others needlessly, this forum will become a slightly better place.

[Warpy]

14. Yes and no

Do some research in old graveyards in New England some day, it's very sobering.

There is usually one man and three to five women in succession, each woman accompanied by tiny headstones marking her children who died until she finally succumbed to bearing one every year, usually in her late 20s or early 30s.

The only women who had a chance of living longer are the last wives who were left widows when the man finally died or spared yearly childbirth when his pecker did.

[HamdenRice]

20. Very true -- as I wrote downthread, the single biggest health improvement has been handwashing,

clean water, sewage removal, and especially clean child birthing -- in essence, hygiene. But I think the point remains that these gains were not delivered by big pharma, but by public health authorities.

[Warpy]

23. Women who were attended by midwives had a lower mortality rate

than their wealthier sisters who were attended by doctors who had just come from dissecting a putrid corpse without washing their hands, but that's not what I'm talking about. The graveyards I'm referring to are in more rural areas where there were no physicians.

Handwashing and hygiene wouldn't have saved many of the children represented by those tiny headstones. Those children were generally killed by infectious disease before there were vaccines to prevent them and medicine to treat them.

Face it. The reason so many of us survived childhood is the efforts of people who brought us the tools to do so: researchers into vaccines and pharmacology.

[dropkickpa]

17. With well over 7000 names in my family tree researched

I've found that the average age of death is roughly 50 in my family, and this is excluding the poor record keeping for women (often nothing more than a name, no age of death known) and the much more thorough record keeping of the last 150 years when medical care has greatly improved and life spans were steadily increasing. Of course there were exceptions and the *surviving* women in one particular line of my family are very long lived (average age of death for those surviving past 45 is 93), but, taken as a whole, before 1900, the vast majority of those whom I have death dates for who lived past age 10 died before they hit 60.

[happyslug]

7. and the bible said you will live "Three score and ten years" i.e .70 years

The bible comment was a reflection of the fact that prior to about 1800 if you reached five years of age, you could expect to live till you were 70. The average expected life expectancy of a five year has risen only about four years since 1900 (Mostly better treatment for child birth for women and injuries for young men PLUS improvements in water people drink).

As to infants the big improvements have been the advent of vaccines for most child hood disease AND improvements in water quality. In many ways improve access to pure water seems to be the biggest factor. For example. the City of Pittsburgh had one of the highest infant death rates in the Country around 1900. Why? The Water of the City of Pittsburgh was that bad. If you could afford it you purchased bottle water (and those people who did so had a substantial greater chance of NOT dieing). By the 1920s the City had started to improve its water to the level the death rate dropped radically afterward. The reason I bring this up is one of the chief reason for improvements in life expectancy since 1900 has been improved water, which most people prior to 1900 did NOT have access to. While improved water is related to the medical community, the main people involved were the engineers and designers who made sure the water going into your home is safe to drink.

Thus the improvements in life expectancy is NOT that great if you are five year of age or older, but it has increase tremendously for those under five. As I pointed out above this is more do to with the improvements in water quality and Vaccines then anything else done by the medical Community. Statistics are fun, but lets be careful with them. For example if you has one person die at age 1 and another die at age 69 what is the average life expectancy of that "Group"? 35, 69 plus 1 divided by the number of people in the group (2) makes the average life 35 life expectancy. If you had two people dieing at age one (and some records show infant mortally as high as 4 out of 5 births) and one living till 68, the total still adds up to 70 but this time dived by 3, comes to a little over 23 average life expectancy. If we use the number 5 (remember 4the report that 4 out of 5 babies died before turning age 5) and 74 (one lives to age 70m the others dead by age 1) then the average age drops to 15. Stats are fun, but lets be careful when we use them to make sure the stats are meaningful.

Now, I do NOT want to sound like I am attacking modern medicine, I believe I am alive today do to modern medications, but let keep it in proportion to what it has achieved, which is a lot, but the use of average life expectancy of 200 years ago compared to today, hides more then it reveals and why we must be careful on the use of Statistics and understand how stats can be manipulated to show what the author of the report want as oppose to what the stats actually report.

[trotsky]

8. "The average expected life expectancy of a five year has risen only about four years since 1900"

Actually, you're quite wrong there. From the CDC's 2004 life tables (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_09.pdf), the "Years of life remaining" for 5-year-olds was 55 in 1900, and is now 73.5. That's almost 20 additional years of life for today's 5 year olds.

"Thus the improvements in life expectancy is NOT that great if you are five year of age or older"

I dunno about you, but 20 years sounds pretty great to me.

[happyslug]

12. Be careful about data from 1900, I was going by memory, but the stats in the net are weak

For example most people use the Statistics from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)but the HHS site itself indicates the 1900 stats are NOT comprehensive, for example it is only based on data from only 10 states and then those were NOT complete even from those states:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus07.pdf#027
http://www.efmoody.com/estate/lifeexpectancy.html
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/life-exp.htm

The problem with the statistic for the US prior to the Great Depression is the entire concept of accurate numbers were foreign to most people. The number had to point to something. The best example is the number of death from the 1905 San Francisco Earthquake, the number was fixed by the city council, recent review of the death records indicate the number was MUCH higher, but those higher numbers were viewed as numbers that would hurt business, thus were suppressed.

Now, again the main improvements seems to be tied in with improvement in water treatment, the better the water the higher the life expectancy. Another factor is the affect of better cars, especially since the 1950s. The number of Traffic deaths have drop tremendously since the 1950, and since it is mostly males in the late teens and early 20s that get into such accidents this has the effect of lifting the numbers. My point was some of these numbers are NOT reliable as we would use that term today, prior to the 1930s the people gathering the data that would be entered into the data base were much like the people in Bush's administration, more concern that the data support their position then the data being accurate.

Some stats on Auto Safety, but nothing from the 1960s to see the drop:
http://www.safercar.gov/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/automobiles/22SAFETY.html

[trotsky]

13. LOL - that's one constant here in the Health forum.

Constantly moving goalposts! "But, but, you can't compare because of infant mortality!" So I start at 5 years old. "But, but, there were only 10 states in the statistics!" And so on and so on. Never satisfied, never able to argue a fixed point - always have to shift the turf, shift the goal.

Let's use some basic reasoning here. Those 10 states where the statistics were good were ALSO those most likely to have better healthcare, sanitation, etc. Common sense would dictate that having stats from all the states would skew them even worse!

The rest of your handwaving is unrelated to the main point. I mean, really - auto fatalities since 1960? When talking about mortality in 1900? How many auto fatalities occurred in 1900? Heck, auto deaths would probably be the greatest skew AGAINST my point, since far more people today die in auto crashes - despite far superior safety - than in 1900 for the simple fact that millions more people USE cars than did in 1900.

You seem unable or unwilling to address the fact that 5-year-olds today live 20 years longer than the 5-year-olds of 1900.

prior to the 1930s the people gathering the data that would be entered into the data base were much like the people in Bush's administration, more concern that the data support their position then the data being accurate

Do you have any proof of this assertion, or are you grasping at straws?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

10. thank you for this very clear answer

I appreciate knowing that someone else besides me saw a flaw in the statistical argument.

[dropkickpa]

16. Yeah, the bible is just chock full of facts

sheesh

[happyslug]

22. I used a Bible as a Source for the fact most people, even in ancient time, expected to live to 70

I could site Pharaoh Pipi II, who ruled for 94 years (This may be an error, some scholars believe it was only 64 years, the additional 30 years added as an accident OR deliberate forgery by someone in the New Kingdom of Egypt who wanted to make a clear claim of descent from someone who died 2000 years before). For more on Pipi II see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepi_II

I could have cited the case of Augustus Caesar, who ruled the Roman Empire for 58 years living till her was 77 years of age. His rule is more documented then most rulers from earlier or even later time period. For more on Augustus see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus

For more recent times, lets look at King Louis XIV, who ruled for 72years and lived till he was 77 (He assumed the position of King of France when he was five years of age). For more on Louis XIV see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV_of_France

I can mention others, but the Biblical quote is a good observation of how long people expected to live ONCE THEIR OBTAIN ADULTHOOD, which is why I and others have used it.

[trotsky]

25. Despite statistics from just the last century proving you wrong. n/t

[dropkickpa]

28. The rich always live longer

Bad examples.

[LeftishBrit]

44. There have always been individuals who lived to be very old...

but there is a far greater number of very elderly people now than in the past.

And Louis' longevity is of note because it was exceptional. Checking on British royalty of similar time: Queen Anne died at 49; she had five children who survived birth, and all died before reaching adulthood. Her predecessors, the joint rulers William and Mary died at 52 and 29 respectively (William's death resulted from an accident, but he would probably have survived now, as the accident didn't kill him at once and the direct cause of death was pneumonia. Mary died of smallpox, as did William's father). Their predecessor James II died at 67 - pretty old for that time - and his predecessor and brother Charles II died at 54.

And one would expect royalty, if not assassinated, to live longer than the average person. The peasants of the time certainly didn't live as long as their monarchs.

[AdHocSolver]

15. Actually, mummies and skeletons have been found that showed people had surgery and survived it.

Much of ancient medicine was lost over the years. However, there is evidence of quite a bit of medical knowledge and the existence of sophisticated surgery and knowledge of drugs and other treatments thousands of years ago.

Ancient medicine compares significantly to modern medicine in America in that only the wealthy could afford this standard of treatment.

For centuries, medieval medicine, right through to the late nineteenth century, because of ignorance, killed as many patients as they helped. Many infants and pregnant women died in hospitals due to the spread, by doctors, of puerperal fever, also known as childbed fever. This was due to doctors not washing their hands after attending sick patients and carrying germs (which they didn't believe existed) to the wards where pregnant women stayed.

Even today, tens of thousands of hospital patients die due to mistakes made in the hospital, or by getting virulent drug-resistant infections just from being in the hospital. There are plenty of drugs that maim and kill the people who take them.

The big advances in modern medicine were in development of antibiotics (although they are becoming less effective due to overuse), vaccines, and anasthetics that allow surgeons more time to perform complex surgery on a sedated patient. However, native Americans are known to have applied a mold to wounds that has antibiotic qualities, and ancient surgeons may have had drugs to sedate surgical patients that we don't know about. The only real advance is in widespread use of vaccines to prevent the spread of disease.

There have been preservatives in food for thousands of years. Sugar, salt, and spices were used to preserve food. The chemicals used today are used as cheap substitutes. Keeping manufacturing costs down to increase profit takes precedence over safety today.

[trotsky]

18. Your point is?

Very little factual information to addresses what I said. And yes, we know that ancient civilizations had surgical treatments - most with very limited success.

http://cancer.about.com/od/historyofcancer/a/cancerhistory.htm

The world's oldest documented case of cancer hails from ancient Egypt, in 1500 b.c. The details were recorded on a papyrus, documenting 8 cases of tumors occurring on the breast. It was treated by cauterization, a method to destroy tissue with a hot instrument called "the fire drill." It was also recorded that there was no treatment for the disease, only palliative treatment.

For centuries, medieval medicine, right through to the late nineteenth century, because of ignorance, killed as many patients as they helped.

But do you have evidence that without the botched treatment, the patients would have survived? Generally the only time things were attempted were when all other avenues had been exhausted. In other words, the patient was about to die anyway. Yet you're going to blame those deaths on early medical techniques? That's quite intellectually dishonest.

The only real advance is in widespread use of vaccines to prevent the spread of disease.

I disagree that vaccines have been the "only" real advance (I'll put today's antibiotics up against a Native American poultice any day) - but you will find a large number of Health Forum regulars who oppose vaccination. Stick around and maybe you can help fight their ignorance!

[AdHocSolver]

41. My point is that with all the medical knowledge we have today, there is NO EXCUSE...

...for all the people who needlessly die from bad medicines that are sold just to make a profit.

Similarly, there is no excuse for the tens of thousands of people who die every year from medical mistakes, or the abuses of antibiotics that create drug-resistant microbes that kill people after their surgeries were successful.

The doctors who were unable to save a patient in times past had the excuse of ignorance. When modern medicine provides so much knowledge, there is NO EXCUSE for the many who die or are maimed these days at the hands of doctors or the pharmaceutical industry.

For your information, I worked in hospitals for several years, and I had the opportunity to observe the medical establishment up close. My observations helped form my opinions.

[HamdenRice]

19. Very disingenuous because you are lumping together lots of causes of death

and implying that big pharma and vaccines are the main reasons for the decrease in mortality from the bad old days.

While vaccines certainly play a role, especially in preventing epidemics of certain communicable diseases, as has been pointed out in this thread, the decrease in infant mortality is one of the main contributors to increased average lifespan.

The single most important modern medical contribution to increased lifespan is actually hygiene -- things like clean water, handwashing, reasonably clean conditions for child birth and non-rotted food.

That's why poor countries experience phenomenal rises in life expectancy even without the availability of modern medicines and vaccines. Local public health and hygiene efforts to provide clean water and education about hygiene are usually the biggest contributors to better health and longer life, and those are not provided by big pharma.

[trotsky]

24. Of course, I never said those factors didn't play a role.

I just challenge those who think a natural diet and avoiding medicine/doctors - if that's all it takes to be healthy - to take a good long look at when all of humanity did just that. And life, quite frankly, sucked. People still got cancer. People died of communicable diseases.

the decrease in infant mortality is one of the main contributors to increased average lifespan.

Sure is (which vaccines, medicines, etc. have undoubtedly helped) - and as I noted upthread, even when starting at age 5 life expectancy has considerably increased in just the last century. Take a look at the tables.

[HamdenRice]

27. You might be interested in the online reviews of the book, Poverty and Life Expectancy

Poverty and Life Expectancy: The Jamaica Paradox by James C. Riley. Riley was trying to understand why Jamaica, a poor country, experienced a dramatic change from being a low life expectancy country to a high life expectancy country (iirc, around the 1930s-1940s) without becoming wealthy or having much access to advanced medical technology.

His conclusion was that basic hygiene was the major contributor to the "Jamaican Paradox" of poverty and longevity. Medicine played a role, but so did better nutrition, hygiene education, segregation of people with communicable disease, and other cheap public health measures. This book reflects part of the consensus in the public health development field -- namely, that the biggest contributor to changes longevity actually are public health measures, not medicine per se -- public health measures that some might dismiss as "holistic."

If you travel in parts of the former British empire, such as the former British West Indies, and British southern Africa, you will notice that there is a near obsession with cleanliness and hygiene among the poor which is a cultural legacy of public health campaigns carried out early in the 20th century.

Of course, certain vaccines helped. But the contribution of many vaccines is to reduce morbidity, not mortality. Similarly, a lot of our medical expenditures reduce or ameliorate morbidity as opposed to mortality.

Your OP suggests that before modern medicine many people died young. That's true, but that's correlation, not causation. The underlying causation was medical and scientific knowledge, which fed both public health and pharmaceutical advances. Between the two, it was the former, public health, that contributed the most to longevity.

[trotsky]

30. Hey, if you want to argue, as the people to whom the OP was addressed...

that a "natural diet" and avoiding vaccines, medicines, and modern medical care will cure all our diseases, be my guest.

As it is, however, you have chosen a strawman to attack. Yet again.

[HamdenRice]

31. Here are your words-->

Thousands of years ago...

...when no vaccines existed, there were no preservatives in our food, "big pharma" was millenia away from "poisoning" us, all cancer was treated "naturally" (no chemo or radiation), and there were NO DOCTORS....

the average life expectancy at birth was 20 years.

<end quote>

The obvious implication is that "preservatives in our food," "big pharma," cancer treatments and doctors are what caused life expectancy to rise above 20 years.

That's false.

Experts in the history of public health and in public health development generally agree that the main cause of the rise in life expectancy was hygiene, clean water, clean birthing conditions, better diet and nutrition, and other public health measures that can best be described as "holistic."

Even small pox began to be conquered in Europe and America before modern medicine, through the use techniques that might be called holistic -- variolation -- because the practitioners did not fully understand the scientific basis of what they were doing.

These are facts, and I've given you some reading materials that will confirm those facts. Your snark, ""natural diet" and avoiding vaccines, medicines, and modern medical care" is the only strawman in this thread. I didn't say I wanted to avoid any of those things, but just want to state the truth about the cause of improvements in human longevity.

And of course, vaccines and modern medicine contributed to those improvements, but they are not the main cause. That's why public health officials have noted the longevity-poverty paradox in countries as different as Jamaica and China.

Unless, of course, you have some better data?

[trotsky]

35. Did I say anything factually wrong in my OP?

You are spinning out an "implication" and then proceeding to attack it. In other words, you're using a:


Again. You really need to develop a second argumentative technique, you know.

Now if you agree with some other posters and think that a "natural diet" plus refraining from vaccines and "big pharma" medicine will cure all our ills, please present your arguments. Otherwise this subthread is done.

[HamdenRice]

37. Still trying to dance away from your egregious OP

Bottom line: Big pharma, preservatives and cancer cures have nothing to do with increasing life expectancy above 20, which is exactly what your rather inane OP is all about.

[trotsky]

38. No, I'm just refusing to dance with your strawman.

Bottom line: Big pharma, preservatives and cancer cures have nothing to do with increasing life expectancy above 20, which is exactly what your rather inane OP is all about.

"Nothing?" Really? That is just as factually wrong as the strawman you made of my post. I've asked you a specific question twice, and you've refused to answer. Unless you have ANYTHING to add that actually addresses that, I'm done reading your fundamentalist rantings.

[HamdenRice]

39. What on earth are you babbling on about now?

What questions? I've said several times I am not in favor of avoiding modern medicine. Can't you read?

(Obviously not.)

So I'll ask once again, do you agree that hygiene played the major role in increasing life expectancy? Do you have any data to contradict this? Will you provide some information that refutes Riley's book?

[trotsky]

40. Then you disagree with the people to whom my OP was directed.

Of course hygiene played A role, and I've never denied that fact. But in your fundamentalist zeal to attack one single strawman point, you totally missed the overall message.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

34. remember, some people have never heard of a vaccine they didn't just love

and defend.

Its a long standing thing here in the Health forum.

There are certain people to whom any and all vaccines are God.

[trotsky]

36. Of course that's also a strawman.

But that's never stopped you before.

[Dorian Gray]

21. It is a good point

I have a friend who breast fed her children until they were 5 years old. Her argument for it was that they do it in many other cultures, ignoring the fact that those cultures often have a very high infant mortality rate, high poverty rate (preventing people from buying proper nutritional food for their children), and an earlier life expectancy rate than our country.

I have no problem with people choosing to breast feed for a long time (though I wouldn't choose to do it longer than 6 mos - a year), but I found that argument to be really off-putting.

Just as I would find the argument you list in your OP to not be a good example to live a more natural life-style. (Though I do think natural living may have some benefits, I would never consider ignoring proper medical advice.)

[trotsky]

26. Absolutely it's great to eat healthy food, free as possible of pesticides, etc.

Exercise regularly, avoid stress, all that stuff doctors have been saying for decades. This thread was directed at the latest round of Health forum visitors who bring up the "sugar causes cancer" or "vaccines cause more harm than good" health lies.

[Dorian Gray]

29. I agree with you on this topic

It's dangerous to assume that modern medicine is just one big scheme to make us all ill, especially when life expectancy and quality of life continues to improve decade by decade. Because of modern medicine.