In Brief
By Andy Humm
Spending More, Feeling Sicker
Though the British spend only half of the $5,200 per person a year on medical care that we do, Americans aged 55 to 64 are much sicker than their British equivalents, a study by the University College of London has determined. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and reported in The New York Times, the survey notes that even high-income Americans with good insurance have worse health indicators than their counterparts in Britain, where medicine is socialized. Both nations smoke too much, but Brits drink more than Americans.
Dr. Michael Marmor, one of the researchers, attributes the disparities in overall health to “the differences in the circumstances in which people live — work, job insecurity, the nature of communities, residential communities, et cetera.” Americans showed higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, lung disease, and cancer. Because of obesity, wealthy Americans have the same rates of diabetes and heart ailments as the least educated and poorest Britons.
Warnings for Women on a Vitamin A Derivative
Fenretinide, a derivative of Vitamin A, is a popular drug for women abroad who have had breast surgery. But a 15-year Italian study of 2,800 subjects in Europe now finds that postmenopausal women who took it had “a 23 percent higher rate of recurrence in the previously unaffected breast,” says a HealthDay report — though younger, pre-menopausal survivors who took fenretinide had a 38 percent lower rate of recurrence than the control group. It did not affect rates of cancers occurring elsewhere in the body.
Fenretinide is not approved for use in the United States, thanks to an inconclusive 11-year trial and linkage to a higher risk of night blindness. The researchers from Milan argue that, given the benefit that seems to accrue to younger subjects, a new study is overdue.
American breast-cancer survivors most commonly take a drug called tamoxifen to prevent a recurrence, and it has about a 50 percent success rate.
The End of the American Dream?
Around half of American adults believe that today’s kids will be worse off when they grow up than people are now, according to the Pew Research Center. So much for the upward mobility of successive generations – even if younger Americans themselves don’t feel that way at all. Pessimism is highest among folk over 65; they take a dim view by 2 to 1, Senior Journal reports, with women having a darker outlook than men.
Limits of Prostate Screening After 75
Screening men beyond age 75 for prostate cancer may do more harm than good is the conclusion of a recent study by the New Mexico Veterans Administration Health Care System. Aggressively treating these cancers in that age group turns out to have scant effects on survival rates.
The study of 465 men age 75 to 84 was published in the American Journal of Medicine. It recommends “conservative management” of prostate problems of oldsters rather than aggressive treatment that may provoke urinary and sexual problems.
Dr. Richard M. Hoffman, the lead researcher, told Reuters: “Most professional organizations, even those that support prostate-cancer screening, recommend that we probably shouldn’t be screening men who are over 75” or that it be done “very cautiously.”
Why Some Older People with Cancer End Treatment
Slightly more than 78 percent of older cancer patients complete their chemotherapy. Of those who do not, the reasons vary from physical frailty to complications from the treatments to lack of social support. So say researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle, as reported in HealthDay News. Different characteristics of the doctors concerned did not play much of a role. Blacks were just as apt to complete treatment as whites.
The researchers recommended more psychological and physical support during the whole course of treatment.
We Give More as We Age, and Get More Cynical About It
More than 90 percent of Americans made a charitable donation last year, but a DonorPulse survey conducted by Harris Interactive found that older people are the most likely to do so. Among 18-to-29-year-olds, 75 percent made such donations while 95 percent of those over 50 did. The survey, reported by the Wall Street Journal, also said that older Americans do more volunteer work — 64 percent of those 50 to 64 years of age, 72 percent of those over 65. The rate for 18-to-24-year-olds was 50 percent, for 25-to-29-year-olds 59 percent.
Older people are also, paradoxically, less inclined to believe that charities are honest in their use of donations.
One Job That Welcomes Older Men
After age 40, you may give up dreams of joining the police or fire departments, but the Roman Catholic priesthood is open — not least to older men. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has released statistics showing the average age at which men now get ordained to be 37. Four percent of the new Ameican priests are older than 60.
There has also been an increase in foreign-born men entering U.S. seminaries, from 24 percent in 1998 to 30 percent today.
Calcium Helps Older Women, But Few Take It
Calcium supplements have proved to reduce the risk of breaking bones, but more than half of women over 70 in a study at the University of Perth, Australia, did not comply with the regimen of two 600-milligram tablets a day. The Archives of Internal Medicine reports that those who took their calcium supplements had only a 10 percent risk of fractures versus 15 percent of those who took a placebo. But the overall lack of compliance led researchers to suggest that the calcium-supplement route was not the best approach to prevention.
Jane Fonda’s “Third Act”
When Jane Fonda was on the verge of turning 60 nine years ago, she “decided to face it full bore and to deal with it,” calling it her “third act.” So she has told a Cambridge, Massachusetts, church audience.
Prior to reaching 62, the actress said, she did not feel she “owned” herself, having grown up feeling “not good enough” to please her father, Henry Fonda, who died in 1982. She attributed the feelings of inadequacy, TownOnline.com tells us, to the “‘misogyny’ that afflicts so many girls in American society without their knowing it.”
Fonda said she has enrolled in theology school in Atlanta for her third act after being raised atheist. She complained that “the right-wing has co-opted Christianity” and was pleased to meet so many progressive Christians.
