Saturday, November 7, 2015

Modern Health Care Questions Its Own Value

Perhaps modern health care may not have all the value we ascribe to it.

…we have compared lifespan in the Old Order Amish (OOA), a population with historically low use of medical care, with that of Caucasian participants from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), focusing on individuals who have reached at least age 30 years. 
Analyses were based on 2,108 OOA individuals from the Lancaster County, PA community born between 1890 and 1921 and 5,079 FHS participants born approximately the same time. Vital status was ascertained on 96.9% of the OOA cohort through 2011 and through systematic follow-up of the FHS cohort. The lifespan part of the study included an enlargement of the Anabaptist Genealogy Database to 539,822 individuals, which will be of use in other studies of the Amish. Mortality comparisons revealed that OOA men experienced better longevity and OOA women comparable longevity than their FHS counterparts.

The study speculates that lifestyle may predispose longer life. (The study is here.)

1 comment:

Mike said...

It's more that not smoking or drinking and being physically active leads to pretty long lives, regardless of medical access (provided you have access to vaccines, potable water, and antibiotics). Medicine is helpful when things go wrong, and the Amish don't have much going wrong.