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Science

Women Live Longer Because Men Are Dumb 201

Posted by timothy from the well-duh dept.
stevesliva writes "CNEWS Canada reported on Sept. 30th that, 'If men dropped their risky ways and bad habits they would live just as long as women.' The story was an interesting spin on a study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, which spun the study very differently. (Thanks to ThisIsTrue for bringing the respun spin to my attention.)"
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Women Live Longer Because Men Are Dumb More

Women Live Longer Because Men Are Dumb

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  • So what? We have DICKS !! Har har...

    Pass me the cigarrete and the booze.
  • "According to statistics from 1997 to 1999, Canadian women have a life expectancy of 81.4 years compared with 75.9 years for men.

    But when deaths from preventable causes are excluded, life expectancy for women is 73.5 years, slightly less than the average of 73.9 for men."


    Is it just me or did the life expectancy drop when deaths from preventable causes are excluded?

    Someone needs to check their math :-\
    • Life was so boring that people killed themselves more.
    • A statistical fluke known Simpson's Paradox [intuitor.com]?
    • hmm, I noticed that and was hoping someone on slashdot had already explained the discrepancy.

    • The actual numbers [globeandmail.com] are 84.9 for women, 82.7 for men after preventable causes are excluded. The reporter screwed up.

    • Oh it gets worse...

      Among young Canadians aged 15-9 women now account for 44.5 per cent of new positive HIV tests.

      I think it is just tragic that so many 9 year old canadian girls are being promiscuous and catching HIV. I think it is high time we invaded Canada and taught them proper morals.
    • Is it just me or did the life expectancy drop when deaths from preventable causes are excluded?

      Yeah it dropped. That's because when marriage is removed, women get together in the bathroom to bicker, instead of yelling at their husbands :P

  • One thing this article absolutely fails to mention is the fact that many dangerous and unhealthy (in a sense) jobs are usually done by men.

    I'm not a sexist or anything stupid like that, but how many female welders or construction workers (ones who do the construction) do you know?
  • I'd rather take risks and have fun during the years I've got rather than add crummy useless old years on at the end.

    I mean, say I exercise every day for 15 minutes for the rest of my life. That's a lot of frickin' time. I could be having fun in that time. Sure, I might live longer, but those will be years when I'm old and decrepit.

    There's no point in adding more years if those years aren't fun. To have a lot of fun you usually have to take risks. Acceptable risks though, no drugs or stunt motorcycle j
    • It is a lot of time.
      assuming you exercise for 15 minutes(what's not enough, it takes my dad 2.5 hours, including driving and dressing), you would spend 285 days doing it, and if it's 2.5, you would spend 68437 hours, 2851 days or 7.8 years!

      everything calculated as for a newborn baby, which has 75 years to live. correct me if my calculations are wrong
      • assuming you exercise for 15 minutes(what's not enough, it takes my dad 2.5 hours, including driving and dressing)

        Your father devotes 2.5 hours/day to excersize? Sorry to say, but he's wasting a lot of time and energy (not to mention money). There's no part of your body you can't excersize with free weights. He'd be better suited to spend ~4 months of health club dues and purchase same and save himself 1.5 hours/day and a small fortune in unspent dues.


    • I mean, say I exercise every day for 15 minutes for the rest of my life. That's a lot of frickin' time. I could be having fun in that time

      Your assumption of constant time is wrong. Moderate amounts of exercise can cause you to need less sleep (and feel better). Actually you'll probably gain more than 15 minutes a day.

      Sure, I might live longer, but those will be years when I'm old and decrepit.

      I agree, life expectancy per se is less important than life quality. However, note that you will probably g
    • I mean, say I exercise every day for 15 minutes for the rest of my life. That's a lot of frickin' time. I could be having fun in that time. Sure, I might live longer, but those will be years when I'm old and decrepit.

      Excercise and having fun aren't exclusive - sure going to the gym or jogging suck major ass, but there are other ways of getting excercise:

      Skiing, snowboarding, surfing, mountain biking, windsurfing, motorcross, whitewater kayaking etc etc. The only way I have any fun exercising is when exe
  • ...I agree. I do all sorts of dumb risk-taking things. No doubt my days are numbered!

    (On the other hand, it keeps life, um, "exciting". Yup.)

  • But who's going to do it? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If men dropped their risky ways and bad habits they would live just as long as women.

    Of course, we wouldn't have any fire fighters, police officers, construction workers, or coal miners, either.

  • ... if you can live longer without taking risks? My life would be boring if I didnt light a bonfire with a molitov cocktail or launch firecrackers out of a slingshot now and then.
  • Hello. I guess I'm a rare example of the male gender since I don't follow the brain-dead rituals of ingesting toxins (alcohol, nicotine, etc). Almost a year ago I turned 21... And I haven't had a single alcoholic beverage in probably three years (the last time was some wine at a family dinner).

    I also do not drive. I'll take rides from time to time, but I do not drive... Don't even have a license. Statistically, driving is almost like playing Russian roulette. Humans are such geniuses! Let's drive a

    • Not everyone lives in urban areas. Out where I live it takes a 15 minute drive just to buy groceries.. 30 to see a movie and even more if you want to do other things. A car out here is more than just a metal box, it is a necessity, because you aren't going to bike 10-20 miles every day to get food ;)

      However staying off alcohol and other drugs is commendable, great job

    • Re:The brain-dead do the rest of us a favor... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'd rather our resources be spent on people who actually LIVE for 70 years, like me and my filthy hedonistic brethren, than to support your clinical ass for 106.

      Go have some fucking fun. Christ.

      • Don't bother spending resources on people unless they are productive. Society needs productive people, not hedonists, otherwise "we" go the way of the Roman Empire. Remember them, lots of fun games and drinking, but this minor problem of the Huns spoiling the party.

        If only they'd paid more attention to the not-fun stuff.

        -AD
        • IIRC it wasn't the huns who brought down the Roman empire (though they certainly didn't help keep it going).

          It was, AFAIK, because the constant civil wars towards the end had left the army so depleted that there weren't enough troops to keep the frontier secure. Then the idiot emperor decided to fix this problem by enlisting barbarians into the Roman army, even letting them keep their barbarian commanders IIRC. It doesn't take a genius to guess what happened next.

          If only they'd had Russel Crowe...

    • Re:The brain-dead do the rest of us a favor... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ee_moss ( 635165 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @04:01PM (#7191067)
      By dying off early, they'll consume less of the limited resources of planet Earth. So go on ... Because when you die, the planet can stop wasting its finite resources on you. ;) Woaah.. this sounds along the lines of:

      * "To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem." - Lamont Cole

      * "This is as good a way to get rid of them as any." - Charles Wursta, Environtmental Defense Fund in response to the implications of millions dying of malaria from a global ban on DDT.

      * "I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds." - Paul Watson, founder of Greenpeace

      * "While the death of young men in war is unfortunate, it is no more serious than the touching of mountains and wilderness areas by humankind." - David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth

      * "Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet." - David M. Graber, research biologist with the National Park Service

      * "Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." - John Davis, editor of Earth First Journal

      * "I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems." - John Davis

      It sounds like these people all have one thing in common: complete disregard and lack of care for human life. I'm not sure about you, but I'm completely against the environmental movement. I'm all for saving the environment, but not at the cost of someone's life. When resources get running too low, I believe our increase in technology will make up for it.

      On a side note, does taking rides improve your chances of not getting killed in a car wreck? I agree that taking less rides improves your chances, or riding a bus, but I trust my own defensive driving skills over my neighbor's any day.
      • These are awesome quotes but are they for real? Do you have the references for them?

        -AD

        • Re:cool quotes! (Score:2, Informative)

          by ee_moss ( 635165 )
          Sure thing! You can actually find quotes like this all over:

          http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/artic les/fee/average.html [gmu.edu]

          http://www.cei.org/gencon/029,03332.cfm [cei.org]

          http://www.off-road.com/green/ecoquote.html [off-road.com]

          http://www.bloomington.in.us/~lgthscac/biblicalchr istianity'sdefinition.htm [bloomington.in.us]

          If you copy one of those quotes into Google, you'll come up with a whole slew of good results.

          Offtopic Stuff:
          Always good to compliment the fellow slashdotter - the sliderule thing mentioned in you
          • I wonder what would happen to men's lifespans if they went back to using slide rules instead of calculators? Your comment on the abacus leads me to think that the most advanced calculation tool may act as a proxy for how 'advanced' the civilization is. The China & Japan were, IMO the most advanced civs of the 1AD time period and the abacus was a manifestation of that. What were the lifespans like versus, for example, the Roman and Persian empires of the same age?

            Romans: 41 [romans-in-britain.org.uk] to 50 yrs [anglican.org]

            Persians: ? yrs

            • The Romans had the abacus too. It may even have been invented there and moved east.

              Take a look at Roman numerals and reflect upon how they're exactly how you'd represent the numbers on an abacus. Some people deride Roman numerals as being impossibly hard to do arithmetic with -- on the contrary, they make it very easy to use an abacus with.
            • [laughing] I was just explaining slide rules to someone the other day. And I remember when I first got a powered calculator, and after numbers got large or small beyond a certain point it would give me a "close enough" overflow result -- just like the same numbers on a slide rule -- and I said, "in that case, why is this any better?" :)

              Anyway, thanks for the Romans link... that's my period of historical interest :) (BTW the site's email CGI is broken; if you have contact w/ the owner you might mention thi
          • Did you ever see the abacus-vs-PC calculation demo? IIRC, at the time the computer in question was about the speed of an average 486, and the calculations ran from simple to fairly complex. The experienced abacus users beat the computer every time. Their fingers were probably violating a slew of natural laws about how fast living things can move, too :)

            Gives meat to "when I was a lad, we carved our own computers out of wood"!

            Speaking of natural laws! Humans exert evolutionary pressure on the biosphere jus
      • Actually I thought some of those quotes were quite balanced and reasonable given a fairly broad perspective. The ones about malaria, starving children and small pox were a bit dodgy, but I can easily empathise with the others, given a little objectivity.

      • I think it is more like they have say what they feel and have a broad perspective, which is much more honorable than equivocating.

        Many of the quotes are about violence against children. While we all say we want to protect children, what do we do to make it happen. We are talking right now about how important tax cuts are. How we are being taxed to death. I wonder if any of those people with 10 million in the bank and a take home salary of over a million would give up some of those tax cuts to supply a

        • I wonder if any of those people with 10 million in the bank and a take home salary of over a million would give up some of those tax cuts to supply a truly fee and universal immunization for all children.

          First, the taxes paid by the group you've described are chicken feed and wouldn't be enough for a big city Parks and Rec budget, much less a full national vaccination program. But it's easy to talk about how others should be more generous (at gov't gun-point) isn't it...
          Second, there's no lack of money

          • > It's not the job of television to educate
            > children on how to eat. At the risk of sounding
            > like a broken record, this is something the
            > parents are responsible for.

            This kind of logic sounds great until you actually are a parent. Then you realize that while it is indeed your responsibility to instill healthy eating habits into your child, the influence of television makes your job very much harder, and being a parent is already very hard work. There is a cost for unrestrained sex, violence an
          • Actually, there's a LOT less money going into vaccines than there needs to be... just not in the US. There are too many impoverished people in too many countries to say that the fight against preventable diseases is over. I'm not saying that throwing money at a problem will make it go away, but it's a very important point that unless companies get paid to make the vaccines, they aren't likely to do it completely for free. (most companies do donate large amounts of medically necessary products to programs th
            • Actually, there's a LOT less money going into vaccines than there needs to be... just not in the US.

              So you're saying the "wealthy" should forgo a tax cut to pay for vaccination programs in other countries? Now we're getting into "foreign aid" territory rather than the "public health" premise that was originally stated, and THAT'S something that's not going to be solved with money.

              • i got nothin'; i think if it were more on the front burner for people in THIS country, those preventable diseases vcould be better prevented. i think if we just insisted on better use of the resources that we already provide... but i don't have a ready answer how to make it all better...
            • Actually, there's a LOT less money going into vaccines than there needs to be... just not in the US.

              So you're saying the "wealthy" should forgo a tax cut to pay for vaccination programs in other countries? Now we're getting into "foreign aid" territory rather than the "public health" premise that was originally stated, and THAT'S something that's not going to be solved with money

      • Sounds like it: yes.

        Is like it: no.

        The difference is that the extinction of the stupid is entirely voluntary. Not feeding a starving child is cruel because chances are the child did not choose to starve. On the other hand, someone who drives like a lunatic is voluntarily removing themselves from the gene pool. Such an altruistic act of self-sacrifice is to be applauded indeed.

      • You forgot:

        * Save the planet, kill yourself... :-)
      • As we breed and propagate we damage the biosphere of Earth. As we damage the biosphere of this planet, the carrying capacity declines (regardless of what you feel Earth's carrying capacity is - as you probably know supposedly credible estimates vary from about two billion to thirty) and where this is obviously leading is to massive dieoffs.

        Hence, it is best to control population now. While some of those people have serious problems in that they are forgetting that regard for human life really drastically

      • With two exceptions (the first two), which seem a little callous, I see nothing wrong with these statements whatsoever. Are you making an argument here? What exactly is it?
        • The fact that you can't find anything wrong with all of those statements is a perfect example why the environmentalists have become more and more fringe instead of mainstream and are counter-productive to their own goals.
          • That doesn't explain anything about me, I'm not an environmentalist, don't vote green, don't have memberships in greenpeace or whatever... I simply find the statements to be pragmatically oriented. Debatable? I don't know, I'd have to do more research. But I definitely don't see them as some sort of abomination, and I still don't see exactly what they're supposed to prove about those who made them.
      • I'm all for saving the environment, but not at the cost of someone's life.

        Do you really believer your pitiful little life is more important than the survival of our ecosystem and our entire species ?

        If so I'm staggered by your narcissism.
        • what is the ecosystem of an urban area?

          the concept of food chains and ecosystems stopped applying to the human race around the bronze age and have only become less applicable since.

          it's not a narcissistic comment, it's a pragmatic one. while having a pristine planet may have once been a grand idea, technology has stripped that possibility away a long time ago. it's possible to strike a balance between the world of greenery and the world of concrete, but it's simply no longer possible to have an Earth wi

    • Alcohol has good sides too, it decreases the risks of getting heart diseases, that sort of thing. Drinking 1 glass, for males possibly 2 glasses of alchohol per day probably gives more benefit than harm.

      Source: _Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating_, by Walter C. Millett.

    • Re:The brain-dead do the rest of us a favor... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ctr2sprt ( 574731 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @07:03PM (#7191824)
      You know what? You're right, it is brain-dead to smoke and drink, and to a lesser extent to drive. But you can live your life in such terror of death that you don't live a day at all. I'd rather die at 75, having lived a good life, than live to 85 and never having done anything. Part of having a good life is having a full life, both the ups and the downs.

      I expect you won't take me very seriously. Five or six years ago I would've agreed with you, but my father really taught me this lesson by his example. All I hope is that you stop living your life in fear of death and start living it in delight of life, before it's too late.

      • That's true, but your implication that the original poster is living his life "in [...] terror of death" is based on a shaky assumption, namely, that mraymer has the same definition of "a good life" as you do.

        I don't drink, for example. This is mostly because I don't enjoy it. (Admit it, you hated the taste of alcohol the first time you tried it. It's the world's most popular acquired taste.) However this has the fortunate side-effect that, because alcohol is expensive, not imbibing frees up funds to s

        • That's true, but your implication that the original poster is living his life "in [...] terror of death" is based on a shaky assumption, namely, that mraymer has the same definition of "a good life" as you do.

          That's certainly not implied by my post. The only thing implied by my post is that a fear of death should not dictate how one lives one's life. I'm not saying everyone should go jump off a bridge to see what it feels like. I mean, if the guy said "I don't want to drink, because I'm afraid I'll

      • Except that if you drive carelessly, you might not make it to 35, let alone 75.

        If you smoke, you might get some form of cancer and linger on for years in pain before dying.

        If you drink you can develop a host of medical problems, not to mention the emotional effects and strains on relationships. My mother owns a bar so I've had first hand experience on the damage that can and does happen due to alcohol.

        You're right, I don't take your post seriously. You know why? Because I simply mentioned thin

      • Here's an interesting poem that sums up the paradox, from David Zindell's Neverness universe --

        "To be fully alive is to be fully aware.
        To be fully aware is to be full of fear.
        To fear is to die.
        ~ saying of the Warrior Poets, Neverness"

        Just found it apt and interesting :)
    • Consuming less resources? Yeah right--I hope you enjoy paying for my medical bills in the coming decades, cause I plan to ingest a lot of toxins! wheeeeee!
    • "I feel sorry for people who don't drink, because when they wake up in the morning, that's the best they're gonna feel all day." - Frank Sinatra

    • Stop personifying the planet. It does not "waste its resources" on anyone. There is no such thing as mother earth. The earth is a giant rock that settled out of a bunch of dust some 4.5 billion years ago. It does not care if you exist and the only thing, really, that mankind could do to really end the existence of the earth would be either enlarge the sun or smash the moon into it. Neither is going to happen any time soon.

      There is no contract with the earth. The earth does not have any agreement with
    • Get off your high horse. All work and no play makes you boring. If there's any justice in this world you'll be hit by a bus tomorrow as you ride your bicycle while not smoking and not drinking.

  • A cliche but true (Score:3, Funny)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @03:37PM (#7190948)
    Men die sooner than women because we want to.

    Its that till death do us part bit
  • The star that burns the brightest burns the shortest.
  • because, we WANT the eternal peace that comes with death!

    "Take out the trash", "Did you feed the dog", "That ring is too small.", "Marcy told Sue, who told blah", "I bought this new purse today...","I want a big wedding".

    Thank goodness for beer, tobacco, and fast cars!
  • So, after adjusting for all the things that make men die younger, mens life expectancy is the same as womens.

    Stay tuned for the "Wealth Adjusted Poverty Index" which adjusts for the fact that poor people have less money than the rich.

  • Dark Helmet: Evil will always win because good is stupid.

  • I guess old age is a preventable cause of death... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KillerBob ( 217953 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @11:32PM (#7192764)
    According to statistics from 1997 to 1999, Canadian women have a life expectancy of 81.4 years compared with 75.9 years for men.

    But when deaths from preventable causes are excluded, life expectancy for women is 73.5 years, slightly less than the average of 73.9 for men.

    As the title says... I guess old age is a preventable cause of death. Why else would the average life expectency go down when preventable causes are excluded from the calc?
    • Wow, that really is bizarre. What's the story here?
    • As the title says... I guess old age is a preventable cause of death. Why else would the average life expectency go down when preventable causes are excluded from the calc?

      [dons flame-resistant gear]

      I'm guessing traffic accidents caused by poor driving are to blame (if the statistic is correct).

      Preventable: retire licenses of people who are too frail/dissociated to be able to drive properly (ie: react to situations, not back over kids playing at the edge of their driveway or plow through markets).

      I'm s

  • Skewed perspectives (Score:4, Insightful)

    by radtea ( 464814 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @11:14AM (#7194276)
    Isn't it interesting that when women die or have poor health it's viewed as a societal problem and when men die or have poor health it's viewed as our own damned fault?

    Men die because our lives are less valued than women's, and we are brought up to value our lives less. We are surrounded by cultural propoganda dedicated to the proposition that the gruesome death of a young man is, literally, glorious.

    Until we value the lives of men as highly as we value the lives of women, men's lives will continue to be shorter and poorer than women's.

    The data reported in this study contain many subtle cues as to how men routinely mistreat themselves: for example, men take fewer disability days than women. This is not because men suffer from fewer hurts and harms, but because we are taught from birth that it's more important to sacrifice ourselves than take to care of ourselves. And sacrifice ourselves we do.

    --Tom
    • Exactly.

      What do people say to a guy who's complaining about an ache? "Dude, shut up and quit acting like a girl."

      • Take it like a Man. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by anubi ( 640541 )
        Uh huh. Where have we heard this?

        Male stereotypes. I don't think this is genetics, rather its purely societal/psychological.

        This kind of stuff messes up both genders. Women are pressured into anorexic behaviour, and not making use of the talents they have - or often restrained in their endeavors due to pure sexism, as well as the guys which are coaxed into glorification by providing violent entertainment for the masses - i.e. contact sports and the glorification of reckless driving by the media.

        I thi

    • Not to excuse the men aren't worthy meme, but it is the women who bear the children. From that POV, once men have managed to squirt out a few of the little cadgers, their role in this life is pretty much done.
      • once men have managed to squirt out a few of the little cadgers, their role in this life is pretty much done.

        This is tied old rhetoric. Children raised by single mothers, have lower educational achievement, lower earnings, commit more crime, suffer poorer health and die younger than children raised by fathers. The simple fact women are naturally equipped to bear children whilst men are best equipped to prepare children for the world.
  • ...and you know come from particularly dumb male lineage if you've ever had a male relative die right after announceing

    Hey! Y'all! Watch This!!!
  • It's been suggested that since women has a pair of gene X and men only a single X and a single Y.
    Damages done over the years to our genes via mutation and radiation exposure eventually takes a tool on male more than female since men don't have the luxury of duplicated the copies.
  • Young men do "dumb" things because that is what young women want. The study is not clear but I assume that "risky behaviors" are not limited to drugs and such but include many sporting activities. Many young women are attracted to "bad boys", "rugged individuals", "athletic" etc. I get into far more conversations at the local grocery store checkout line when I wear a t-shirt indicating I'm a scuba diver than when I wear a t-shirt indicating I'm a Linux user. What sort of behavior is that rewarding and encou
    • I get into far more conversations at the local grocery store checkout line when I wear a t-shirt indicating I'm a scuba diver than when I wear a t-shirt indicating I'm a Linux user. What sort of behavior is that rewarding and encouraging?

      The right kind of behavior.
  • Women are what stops most of us from doing the kind of stupid shit that tends to get us killed.

    If I didn't have a woman in my life, I'd probably east fast food 6 days per week. I'd probably drink more alcohol. I would still do dumb shit with my friends, like when we used to take 12 gauge shotguns out into the woods and shoot tree stumps.

    These few factors alone have increased my life expectancy by at least a decade.

    LK
  • this isn't news. Many species take chances to increase the chance of mating.

    So to all those men engaging in risky behavor, I double dare ya.

    'cause once you are dead, there'll be more women for me.
  • So let me get this straight: according to the article, women live on average about 81 years, men about 76 years. But when you exclude "preventable" deaths such as smoking, accidents etc, you find that men and women live about 74 years.

    So basically, if I smoke, drink, drive fast cars and sleep around I'll probably live to 76 (or 81 if I was a woman). If I live a careful life and die of "unpreventable" causes, I'll only make it to 74. Either that's the best news I've ever heard, or there's something seriousl

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