The LA Times has compiled a list of how death arrives for Americans in different age groups. I take it this is publicly available information, but it’s interesting to see it all laid out so directly. Despite much-touted decreases in cancer deaths, rampaging tumors still kill hundreds of thousands of people, all the way from infants to ancients.

October 19th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Your link is “members only”, so your post is of limited value.
October 19th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
yup, true dat. no val. dawg
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Hi, TJ and true. You’re right—I hadn’t realized that the LATimes article was available to members-only. On the plus side, you only need a free membership to the Web site.
How do they die? Slowly at first but faster toward the end.
But seriously, for a long while the #1 killer is unintentional injury. Then between ages 45 and 64 that (dis)honor goes to cancer. And for the folks above 64, heart disease is the biggest risk. And there’s a lot of other info in the full list.
October 24th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
These seem to be just the raw numbers. But just the raw numbers are meaningless. For example, I don’t know if the population had, say twice as many 5-9 than 1-4. How do I compare those numbers?