4 ms·
I came here to post the same thing. This is its own fallacy. It was used to market estrogen supplementation, among other spurious remedies, to post-menopausal
by kyllo 14y ago
I came here to post the same thing. This is its own fallacy.
It was used to market estrogen supplementation, among other spurious remedies, to post-menopausal women. "Women didn't used to live very long after menopause--the life expectancy was only about 50. You need to take estrogen pills to keep you healthy into old age."
This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life expectancy was lower primarily due to high infant mortality. Life expectancy is NOT the average age at death.
But then they found out that the estrogen pills were causing breast cancer, so that put a stop to that.
- darkarmani 14y ago> This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life expectancy was lower primarily due to high infant mortality. Life expectancy is NOT the average age at death. Just because lower infant mortality raises the life expectancy, doesn't mean that the average age at death hasn't gone up. I agree with your life expectancy claim do, but it doesn't mean the opposite is true either.
- kyllo 14y agoThat's a true statement--infant mortality has declined and average age at death has also increased, but the increases in average life expectancy are much more greatly attributable to the former than to the latter. The fallacy is "{disease} is a disease of old age, and people didn't used to live past {average caveman life expectancy}. Therefore humans almost never experienced {disease} until modern times." This is very far from the truth, and is usually delivered as part of a sales pitch. I was surprised to see it repeated in the OP almost verbatim. The article debunks several other fallacies but, disappointingly, perpetuates this one.