Why Men Are So Good at Dying
The National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health's Office of Research on Women's Health announced a new Web resource this week that should make it easier for women to get their hands on quality research about everything from pregnancy to breast cancer to hormone therapy. Might a similar resource about men's health issues benefit men? Possibly. But efforts like these are in the most nascent of stages—if they exist at all. And even if they existed, we probably wouldn't use them anyway.
Until about 15 years ago, it was women who lacked information; traditionally, the standard patient in all kinds of medical research on disease and treatments had been the white male. In 1991, the Women's Health Office was created in the Department of Health and Human Services to promote gender equity in research and raise awareness about conditions such as breast cancer, osteoporosis, and depression. Since then, men's activists have been grousing that it's men who aren't getting a fair shake from the federal government. A bill calling for the establishment of a Men's Health Office to tackle such urgent male concerns as prostate cancer, accidents, and suicide has been languishing in congressional committees for years.
Considering the statistics that supporters of the men's office brandish, you'd think it would be an easy sell. According to the Men's Health Policy Center, for example, men die at higher rates than women for many leading causes of death. That includes, for example, a death rate for men that's 50 percent higher than that of women for cancer; twice that of women for ischemic heart disease, and three times that of women for HIV/AIDS. On average—as it's often pointed out—men live a total of 5.2 years less than women.
Leading Causes of Death, 2003*
| Causes of Death | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Heart Disease | 286.6 | 190.3 |
| Cancer | 233.3 | 160.9 |
| Injuries (unintentional) | 51.8 | 24.4 |
| Cerebrovascular disease | 54.1 | 52.3 |
| Chronic lower respiratory disease | 52.3 | 37.8 |
| Diabetes | 28.9 | 22.5 |
| Pneumonia/flu | 26.1 | 19.4 |
| HIV infection | 7.1 | 2.4 |
| Suicide | 18.0 | 4.2 |
| Homicide | 9.4 | 2.6 |
*CDC 2005, Figures are age-adjusted rates per 100,000 U.S. population
Yet, the bill has been the victim of controversy about funding between the men's health activists who argue that in the past 20 years medicine has tilted too far toward Venus and feminists unprepared to give up an inch of their hard-won territory. Men's health advocate Glenn Sacks, for example, makes the case in this column that men's health is underappreciated and underfunded by the federal government. It's true that women's health initiatives have seen a boost in funding, says the Wall Street Journal. Yet, there's a good argument to be made that that's no reason to start a gender war, this Salon piece argues.
For the bulk of men, this bickering is unfortunate: We do have a problem with health—and it's certainly not women. In fact, it's generally our wives and girlfriends who get us to pay attention to our health at all. An American Academy of Family Physicians survey completed in 2007 found that men generally avoid going to the doctor, but among those who do go, 78 percent have been prodded into it by their spouses. Many of us consider watching what we eat unmanly; we glorify risk taking; we drink and drive at staggering rates; we avoid screening tests like the plague; and we suppress and ignore illness as long as we possibly can. Why? Well, we're men. That's just what we do. My dad does it; so do I. So we die sooner. If we want that to change, if we want to provide for our families and be around for them, we've got to face the reality that we—not the women in our lives—have to take responsibility for our health.
A recent study published in The Archives of Internal Medicine looked at what characteristics defined men who live longer than 90 years. Five things jumped out at the researchers: Those men didn't smoke, exercised regularly, avoided diabetes, controlled their weight, and controlled their blood pressure. All of those five things are behavioral.
A Men's Health Office might shed some more light on certain scientific questions: Why do so many men carry their fat in their abdomens? Why are more baby boys stillborn than girls? And it would certainly help bring attention to the grave disparities between the health of white men and those who belong to minority groups. Still, there's plenty of heavy lifting we'll have to do on our own.
Tags: death rates | men's health
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Reader Comments
Man Up, you're part of the problem
Mnn Up, you really have not grasped that the problems men's rights attempt to tackle are not imagined. While I would not discount that political gain is sought through publicising issues (who doesn't do that?) the Mens rights movement is not a bunch of inadequate men out there whining about nothing.
You fail to see that the pendulum has not simply gone to the middle in legal preference and service provision towards the two sexes but it has swung, massively in favour of women! So do some research then come back.
These issues are very real for a number of men across the western world who do, in some areas of their lives (rights in the family, rights after divorce, military draft, justice, health, to name but a few), find themselves without even the hope of a fair hearing.
Your name is a phrase at home in the mouths of a wide swathe of autocratic men, conservatives, callous women and feminists who use phrases such as Man Up to shame men in to silence over their greivances. Luckily, as these articles and many other comments show, I think your efforts increasingly fall on deaf ears.
men don't communicate enough
it is true. we don't.
we don't inform the public that women abuse and murder far more children than do men in American families.
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm04/figure4_2.htm
The link is from our US government. And that body of politicians feels it is more important to pass sexist legislation in the form of the Violence Against Women Act (as sexist title) when hundreds of academic research projects shows conclusively that women are just as, if not more, violent than are men.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2006/may/em_060519male
The feminist propoganda machine has been running in high gear for 40 years. Now the truth is coming out, and it isn't "ginger and spice and everything nice". It is showing that women are just as vile and corrupt as are men. They are not the fairer sex at all.
And it is time that men and women are treated equally by the laws. It is time women are brought down off of their pedestals.
It is time women sign up for the draft just as men are required to do. It is time women pay their way.
anti-male bias - the new American apple pie
Why are the bills that would increase funding for prostate cancer stuck in congress and the senate when most of the members of congress and the senate are male?
Its because American men are pitted against other men from a very early age,.and the Feminist movement, (which is now run on a completely anti-male platform) has exploited and actually encouraged this male-on male violence to harm the average man in virtually all family, social, judicial and career related areas. While the feminists have made an industry of "stopping violence against women" they have remained curiously silent about "stopping violence against men" Many men are killed or seriously hurt by other men who have been egged on by women.
Leaders" like Joe Biden of Delaware are among the most anti-male legislators, and the male population of Delaware does not seem to care about voting him out of office.
Try reading Time magazine or Newsweek or the NY Times - almost every issue has blatantly anti-male articles and yet men do not protest or write to the editor or rally to support other men who have the courage to stand up. In fact, many American men will try to improve their "social standing" with women by attacking men who have the c ourage to stand up to the anti-male lobby.
The anti-male lobby is intent on spreading the "fact" that compassion, decency, eacademic success and civility are the province of women, and that men are solely interested in sex and violence. Yet, American men remain silent - not a single protest or letter to the editor. Not only have these men played a role in destroying their male peers but worst of all, they have undermined the futures of their sons. You wll almost never see a letter or book or article on "Fathers speaking up for their sons" and yet there are hundreds of such articles on "Fathers and daughters"
.This sort of bizzare Oedipal behavior took root since the 1970's and now pervades the entire American political, judicial and social system system to the point of astonishing observers from abroad. Why are American men so willing to kill and maim other men and so spineless and weak when it comes to standing up to injustice against their brothers? Its no wonder that men are dying in disproportionately greater numbers.
Lets start by having each one of you write a letter objecting to anti-male bias when you see it on MSN or CNN or Time or Newsweek or any other media outlet. Have courage, develop some backbone and take back your mental and physical health.
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