anthropophagous: Health and life expectancy in America: How to live longer A HUGE variation in the shortening of life among different groups in the United States is revealed in a new study* led by a team of researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. The study, published in PLoS Medicine, looked at four preventable risk factors: smoking, high blood pressure, elevated blood-glucose levels and being overweight. It then examined how these risk factors reduced life expectancy in eight population groups. Most at risk were Southern rural blacks, who had the largest reduction in life expectancy from these risk factors, with men living 6.7 years less and women 5.7 years less (or, put another way, could expect to gain those years if they were to live healthier lives). Asian Americans had their lives shortened the least, by 4.1 years for men and 3.6 years for women. This seems to be missing any attention to why there is this great disparity. I feel like this paints participation in ‘risk’ increasing behavior as a moral choice that people have full agency to choose or not choose. Obv these disparities (and even what is determined as risk behaviors or which of these behaviors are emphasized) are really structural/societal. I haven’t read the original study but I find this choice of reporting pretty lacking. Yes, the use of cigarette bud imagery does it’s job in pathologizing poverty. The reason why marginalized and under represented individuals have lower life expectancy is because they were born into a family with less money and a community with less money than others, and also because they live farther away from resources that give middle class whites a route into the professional class (and thus, to better health care, nutrition, etc.). Tobacco products have always been marketed to minorities. When the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was signed by Obama, menthol (which was called the “…the most widely used cigarette flavoring and the most popular cigarette of choice for African American smokers” by the New York Times) received special protection from Congress. Philip Morris, the tobacco firm that fought for this compromise in the bill’s provisions, said that the original legislation was racist because it “sends a message that African American youngsters are valued less than white youngsters.” In reality, the company was able to maintain it’s rights to the selling of poison to the black “youngsters” that they claim to represent. 

anthropophagous:

Health and life expectancy in America: How to live longer
A HUGE variation in the shortening of life among different groups in the United States is revealed in a new study* led by a team of researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. The study, published in PLoS Medicine, looked at four preventable risk factors: smoking, high blood pressure, elevated blood-glucose levels and being overweight. It then examined how these risk factors reduced life expectancy in eight population groups. Most at risk were Southern rural blacks, who had the largest reduction in life expectancy from these risk factors, with men living 6.7 years less and women 5.7 years less (or, put another way, could expect to gain those years if they were to live healthier lives). Asian Americans had their lives shortened the least, by 4.1 years for men and 3.6 years for women.

This seems to be missing any attention to why there is this great disparity. I feel like this paints participation in ‘risk’ increasing behavior as a moral choice that people have full agency to choose or not choose. Obv these disparities (and even what is determined as risk behaviors or which of these behaviors are emphasized) are really structural/societal. I haven’t read the original study but I find this choice of reporting pretty lacking.

Yes, the use of cigarette bud imagery does it’s job in pathologizing poverty. The reason why marginalized and under represented individuals have lower life expectancy is because they were born into a family with less money and a community with less money than others, and also because they live farther away from resources that give middle class whites a route into the professional class (and thus, to better health care, nutrition, etc.).

Tobacco products have always been marketed to minorities. When the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was signed by Obama, menthol (which was called the “…the most widely used cigarette flavoring and the most popular cigarette of choice for African American smokers” by the New York Times) received special protection from Congress. Philip Morris, the tobacco firm that fought for this compromise in the bill’s provisions, said that the original legislation was racist because it “sends a message that African American youngsters are valued less than white youngsters.” In reality, the company was able to maintain it’s rights to the selling of poison to the black “youngsters” that they claim to represent. 


  1. laszlo reblogged this from anthropophagous
  2. tsjr1704 reblogged this from anthropophagous and added:
    cigarette bud imagery does it’s job...pathologizing poverty.
  3. anthropophagous posted this

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March 31, 2010

posted at 11:16 AM
reblogged from anthropophagous