European Mortality Data

[Guest guest]

Hi folks:

There are some pretty amazing data in here for mortality rates in

Europe.

http://www.escardio.org/NR/rdonlyres/9F490993-2E87-411C-8782-

148143649D03/0/97burden.pdf

http://snipurl.com/eqsj

For example, the LOWEST overall mortality is, in ascending order,

For males: Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Spain.

For females: France, Spain, Switzerland, Greece, Italy.

The eleven highest mortality countries for males are all eleven of

the old iron-curtain countries!!! Extraordinary.

For cardiovascular mortality:

For males: France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Iceland. (Greece is

fifth on this list).

For females: France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Iceland. (Greece is

thirteenth on this list).

Interesting data. One question that arises is why do some people

spend so much time talking about the low cardiovascular disease rates

in Greece? They are probably much lower than in the US. But why not

select the countries that are nearer the top of these lists? (Of

course Japan is probably better still).

The map ........ Figure 1A .......... is also very interesting.

For example the regions with lowest mortality in Spain are NOT those

on the coasts (i.e. perhaps it is not fish?).

Some regions in the UK, Norway and Sweden also are in the lowest

mortality group. Again the iron-curtain countries look like a

uniform disaster. Scotland, Ireland, Portugal and Finland look like

the next worst, after the iron-curtain countries. These patterns

seem to be about the same for both males and females.

Figure 2 appears to show the rates of improvement (or otherwise)

since 1972 in mortality rates. Fascinating.

The Figure 4(a) map shows pretty clearly that the best cardiovascular

performance is in some parts of France, Spain, Crete and Corsica.

Figure 10(a) shows that the incidence of stroke is quite different

from the other data.

If I was an epidemiologist (perhaps that will be my fourth career

after the cure for aging becomes available?) I could spend years

figuring out the meanings hidden within these data. (For the past

thirty-five years I have spent my time doing something rather similar

with the data on the US economy!)

Enjoy, folks .......... if, like me, this is the kind of stuff yer

enjoy!

Rodney.