[extropy-chat] Four-Year Mortality Index for Older Adults

[Hal Finney]

JAMA today has an article describing a new test giving your odds of
dying in the next four years.  The article is here:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/295/7/801

and the test is here:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content-nw/full/295/7/801/JOC60006FBOX

Unfortunately the test is in graphical format so I can't easily paste in
the questions here, but there are only 12 items so it is easy to try it.
You get different amounts of points for various health problems, and the
more points you have, the lower your chances of survival.

It is aimed at people who are over 50, but it is still interesting to
see what you get points for.  A couple of them are pretty surprising.
Smoking gives you 2 points, but so does being male!  And the most
controversial is that you get 1 point for having a BMI of less than 25,
i.e. it is better to be fat than thin.  This is a principle which the
health establishment is fighting tooth and nail, it flies in the face
of everything they have been saying for decades, but unfortunately for
them the data points this way.

Last Sunday, David McFadzean pointed to an old extropians archive at
<http://bbs.extropy.org/exi-lists/archive/9807/date.html>.  Browsing
through those 1998 postings (the big topic - the thread vs pattern
theories of identity!) I found this one by Robin Hanson: "Why Do We
Die?" <http://bbs.extropy.org/exi-lists/archive/9807/25446.html>.  Robin
points to an earlier JAMA article showing various risk factors:

> Age       25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
>             1.0 2.66 3.46 9.30 16.78 40.00
> Sex      Male Female
>            1.0  .41
> Race       NonBlack Black
>                1.0  1.19
> Residence Rural Suburban City
>            1.0    1.16   1.52
> Education 16+yrs 12-15 0 -11
>            1.0   .95   .90
> Income    30K$+ 10-29K$ <10K$
>             1.0  2.14  2.77
> Smoking    Never current former
>             1.0   1.26   1.28
> Alcohol drinks/mo. Moderate None Heavy
>                       1.0   1.13  .85
> Body Mass    Normal Underweight Overweight
>                1.0     2.03       .94
> Physical Activity Quintiles
>        5(high) 4 3 2 1(low)
>        1.0 1.46 1.60 2.25 2.91

Sorry, the column formatting is a little uneven, but you can read it
if you count the columns.  These are death risk factors, so higher is
*worse*.  The higher number means you have that much greater a chance
of death.

So right off the bat we see that males have over twice the risk of death
as females, all else being equal.  That's a pretty big difference.
We also see the same effect from weight: underweight is twice as bad
as "normal", and overweight is better than normal.  The big news from that
study was that making more money was one of the most protective effects.
People making over $30K had almost 1/3 the death risk of someone making
less than $10K.

Anyway, we can see that many of the elements of the new study are
foreshadowed by this one from eight years ago.  It's interesting that
they left the income question off, that would be easy to answer and it
sounds like it should be worth 2 or maybe even 3 points to make less
than $20K or $10K.  I guess it was just too controversial.

Hal