let's celebrate!

[SIAM]

I think one of the biggest factors is lifestyle and the influences hormones have on lifestyle choices.  As I stated earlier, men are more competitive, more driven leading to more stress and alleviation of stress (alcohol, cigarettes, other drugs) as well as when stress overcomes individuals and suicide occurs.  Men and women have different levels of different hormones, leading to different tendencies and general lifestyle choices.  This is one factor.

Another influence is society and how it deals with the health issues of the sexes.  If you look at how much is spent on breast cancer treatment and research versus prostate cancer treatment and research, you won't be surprised to know women have a greater survival rate after being diagnosed with breast cancer than men do when diagnosed with prostate cancer.  

There are many variables to consider - many which were lacking in the BMJ article.

[VK]

I think one of the biggest factors is lifestyle and the influences hormones have on lifestyle choices.  As I stated earlier, men are more competitive, more driven leading to more stress and alleviation of stress (alcohol, cigarettes, other drugs) as well as when stress overcomes individuals and suicide occurs.  Men and women have different levels of different hormones, leading to different tendencies and general lifestyle choices.  This is one factor.  

That makes sense with what I was thinking about basic medicine - stress isn't much of a factor in life expectancy if everyone is dying of infections, and infectious dieases - but it comes into play when people are living to old age, and everything hinges on how long before various organs start falling apart

Another influence is society and how it deals with the health issues of the sexes.  If you look at how much is spent on breast cancer treatment and research versus prostate cancer treatment and research, you won't be surprised to know women have a greater survival rate after being diagnosed with breast cancer than men do when diagnosed with prostate cancer.  

Agreed. My local gym sells little blue ribbons for prostate cancer. I think it would be nice if we could get that enough publicity to get to sort of support  pink ribbons for breast cancer does (say, if we could get a national chain to endorse the campaign and use it in their publicity the way Boots does with pink ribbons - heck, maybe we should ask Boots if they will. Although somewhere with mostly male customers might do better - any ideas?)

There are many variables to consider - many which were lacking in the BMJ article.[/quote]

[SIAM]

The more I think about it, the more data I see that the BMJ article totally ignores.  If it didn't ignore the very relevant data of other preventable causes of death, it would have no cause for 'celebration':-

http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/health/cause.php

Deaths in developing countries:-

1. HIV/AIDS - 2 678 000
2. Lower respiratory infections - 2 643 000
3. Ischaemic heart disease - 2 484 000
4. Diarrhoeal diseases - 1 793 000
5. Cerebrovascular disease - 1 381 000
6. Childhood diseases - 1 217 000
7. Malaria - 1 103 000
8. Tuberculosis - 1 021 000
9. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - 748 000
10.Measles - 674 000

Another snippet of info:-

Daily deaths around the world

24,000 from hunger
8000 from AIDS
6,000 children from diarrhea
2,700 children from measles
1,400 women from childbirth
550 children in wars
201 from drought

Unless the women dieing from childbirth was INCREDIBLY high before, I'm not seeing the need to 'celebrate' anything (unless of course, you choose to ignore big sets of data).  Also, there are a whole host of reasons why women might be living longer than men.  None of these are investigated in the article.

To me, just looking at survival rates of mothers during childbirth as an indicator to an improvement in world health is like saying your finances are in better shape since you stopped buying newspapers.  Technically it's true - you save 50c or whatever it is a day, but it hardly matters when you then go out and put $50 on a bet.  Of course, if I only considered buying newspapers as an expense, not buying the papers would be a 100% reduction in outgoings, which looks like a really good stat.  

I strongly suspect there are ulterior motives to the publication of the BMJ article, hence the strange spin on the story (the Timothy Leary quote was as unsubtle as you get).  If it was genuine, the tone would have been a lot more objective.