原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻译:bluebit 转载请注明出处

‘There’s something terribly wrong’: Americans are dying young at alarming rates

“问题严重”,美国人正以惊人的速度英年早逝

By Joel Achenbach November 27, 2019 at 12:00 a.m. GMT+8



Brian Benson unloads the body of a 44-year-old woman at the Kern County coroner’s office in Bakersfield, Calif. Prescxtion narcotics were among the medications found in the woman’s apartment. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

布莱恩·本森在加州贝克斯菲尔德克恩县验尸官办公室中搬运一名44岁妇女的尸体。在这名女子的公寓里发现的药物中包括处方麻醉剂。

Death rates from suicide, drug overdoses, liver disease and dozens of other causes have been rising over the past decade for young and middle-aged adults, driving down overall life expectancy in the United States for three consecutive years, according to a strikingly bleak study published Tuesday that looked at the past six decades of mortality data.

美国的年轻人和中年人,在过去的十年里因自杀、服药过量、肝脏疾病和许多其他原因导致死亡率一直在上升,导致美国整体预期寿命连续三年下降。根据周二(注:11月26日)发表的一项研究,《过去60年的死亡率数据令人触目惊心》。



“It’s supposed to be going down, as it is in other countries,” said the lead author of the report, Steven H. Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “The fact that that number is climbing, there’s something terribly wrong.”
He said many factors are at play. The opioid epidemic is a major driver of the worrisome numbers, but far from the sole cause. The study found that improvements in life expectancy, largely because of lower rates of infant mortality, began to slow in the 1980s, long before the opioid epidemic became a national tragedy.

该报告主要作者、弗吉尼亚联邦大学社会与健康中心名誉主任史蒂文·h·伍尔夫(Steven H. Woolf)说,“死亡率应该会像其他国家一样下降。”“事实上,这个数字还在继续攀升,这说明问题相当严重。”
他说,问题涉及很多因素。阿片类药物的流行是这些忧心数字的主要原因,但远非唯一原因。研究发现,在阿片类药物泛滥成为全国性悲剧之前,距今久远的上世纪80年代,预期寿命的增加(主要是婴儿死亡率降低)即开始减缓。

“Some of it may be due to obesity, some of it may be due to drug addiction, some of it may be due to distracted driving from cellphones,” Woolf said. Given the breadth and pervasiveness of the trend, “it suggests that the cause has to be systemic, that there’s some root cause that’s causing adverse health across many different dimensions for working-age adults.”

伍尔夫说道"部分原因可能是肥胖,吸毒成瘾,或因开车分心。"鉴于这一趋势的广度和普遍性,“这说明,造成健康问题的原因一定是系统性的,在许多不同层面上,适龄工作的成年人都存在一些导致健康问题的根本原因。”



The report reveals a broad erosion in health, with no single “smoking gun,” said Ellen Meara, a professor at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.
“There’s something more fundamental about how people are feeling at some level — whether it’s economic, whether it’s stress, whether it’s deterioration of family,” she said. “People are feeling worse about themselves and their futures, and that’s leading them to do things that are self-destructive and not promoting health.”

达特茅斯卫生政策与临床实践研究所教授艾伦·米拉认为,这份报告虽揭示出健康普遍恶化状况,但没有一个“确凿证据”。
她说:“在某种程度上,人们更在意的是与切身相关的东西,如经济,精神压力,或是家庭关系不和方面。“人们对自己和自己的未来感到担忧,这导致他们做出一些自残行为,而不是去做有利于身心健康的事情。”

The JAMA report looked at life expectancy and mortality across the country from 1959 through 2017. Final life expectancy numbers for 2018 will soon be released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The general trend: Life expectancy improved a great deal for several decades, particularly in the 1970s, then slowed down, leveled off, and finally reversed course after 2014, decreasing three years in a row.

《美国医学会杂志》对1959年至2017年期间全国的预期寿命和死亡率进行了调查。美国疾病控制与预防中心(U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,简称cdc)很快在2018年公布最终预期寿命数据。总的趋势是,在这几十年期间里,预期寿命在70年代大幅提高,然后下降,逐渐趋稳,最终在2014年之后开出现转折,进而出现连续三年下滑的情况。



“These kids are acquiring obesity in their early teen years, sometimes under the age of 10,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “When they get up into their 20s, 30s and 40s, they’re carrying the risk factors of obesity that were acquired when they were children. We didn’t see that in previous generations.”
“This isn’t a one-time phenomenon,” he added. “It’s going to echo through time.”

这些孩子在十几岁的时候就得上了肥胖病,有些还不到10岁,”伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校的公共卫生教授s·杰伊·奥尔山斯基(S. Jay Olshansky)说道。“当他们到了20多岁、30多岁或40多岁的时候,他们在儿童时代埋下的肥胖基因届时就会显现出来。而我们在前几代人身上看不到这一点。”
“这不会只有一次,”他补充道。“它将始终将会在时光中回荡。”