Delaying Death

Now that smoking is seriously on the decline, all the health campaigns that used to warn us about the seriousness of tobacco have had to move on to other things.

There seem to be a number of current campaigns here in the UK trying to get us to be concerned with the dangers of this or that, and promising that if we all do something about it we can cut out ‘x’ number of deaths a week. The thing is, it’s BS.

We’re all going to die. End of story. By convincing us all to quit smoking (which I did about 3 years ago) then yes, the number of deaths caused by lung cancer for instance will drop off. But the number of deaths won’t change, only the cause of death.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t be made aware that certain activities can increase the incidence of certain diseases that will likely kill you. Certainly, give us the facts, and allow us to make out own informed decisions, but don’t pretend that it’s going to stop us from dieing.

As a side note, there is also another side effect of delaying all these deaths that the campaigners most likely don’t think about, but most western governments most certainly do. Aging populations. The UK government is already in a bit of a panic because it’s grown to realise in the past few years that people are living longer and longer after they retire, and the cost of paying all those pensions is just going to go up and up, with no easy way to fund them. Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we should just let the ‘oldies’ just die off, just be more mindful of the consequences of what we’re doing.

Sorry, I rambled a bit there. This was my third attempt to post this, the last two disappeared when I suffered connection problems.