Find your risk of dying in U.S. and Europe

William Atkins
Saturday, 07 November 2009 18:14

Science - Health

The project was coordinated through the Carnegie Mellon Center for the Study and Improvement of Regulation, which is part of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy. The CSIR “… focuses on the use of science and risk information to support and evaluate regulatory decision making.”

The new website is called “DeathRiskRankings.com.”

The website states that it provides readers with the ability to calcuate, “… your risk of dying in the next year and allows you to compare that risk to others in the world.”

The article compares, for instance, prostate cancer, in eleven European countries versus the U.S. state of Mississippi, which has the highest risk of a man dying in his 70s of prostate cancer in the United States.

A man in his 70s in Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom has a higher risk of dying from prostate cancer than a man in his 70s in Mississippi.

And, a man in Europe has two to three times the probability of dying from prostate cancer than a man in Hawaii, the U.S. state with the least risk of dying from prostate cancer.

The article goes on to discuss other such comparisons between Europe and the United States, for both men and women, and of people of various ages and ethnic backgrounds. It compares sixty-six different causes of death.

Dr. Fischbeck concludes, "When it comes to health care, there are no easy choices. We hope that adding data to the debate will help make the final policies better."

The website does warn: “It is important to remember that though the interface on this website allows for quick exploration and easy comparison of causes of death; it does not provide information as to why these differences exist. To answer those questions, medical researchers, health psychologists, and accident specialists will have to be consulted.”