I read somewhere that it’s actually an efficient method of nature … babies that won’t make it anyways die early so you waste fewer resources on them. it’s called fail fast
Comment on Causes of death, or track list for latest black metal album?
ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The fact that infants dying is the highest by far just shows how cruel nature is without modern medicine and birthing practices
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Funny, when you apply that to biology, I think it changes its name to “eugenics”.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Tuberculosis (consumption) was another constant killer, coming in at second.
eah@programming.dev 1 day ago
I’ve spent more time than I care to admit reading Wikipedia entries on significant people from past centuries. Way too often their life story is full of disease and death. A dozen siblings. All of them suffer the same disease in childhood. Half of them don’t make it to adulthood. Mother dies during childbirth. Father struggles making money from their creative work, dies in a duel. Subject cared for by wealthy uncle. Is affected for the remainder of their life by the childhood disease. Repeat for the next generation.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 day ago
in college, i did a fair amount of number crunching on mortality statistics and the demographic transition. here’s some numbers i remember from the 1700s: life expectancy: 40
life expectancy at age 20: 72
modern medicine has not added much to our longevity, we’ve just gotten rid of childhood mortality.