I'm kinda surprised the death rate hasn't improved more than that tbh. Though I suspect there are probably a few more unrecognised or unrecorded death causes (other than old age) in 1900 than 2010.

So... because us humans are defying natural selection by curing people of deadly diseases that can be transmitted to the next generation (instead of letting these people die and not have children) we are getting more and more likely to get these diseases. Cool.

That would explain why there are more asthma, alergies, shortsighted people, etc. With my sight I should be dead if it wasn't for our modern society, and now my children may be in the same situation.

I thought consumption was popular? Maybe they just like saying that in tv shows.

I love the ambiguousness of 'accidents', no cure in sight for those

Not really, it's more like, we live long enough so the effects of bad diet and lifestyle become more apparent, rather than dying earlier of a disease. I don't think city-dwelling, working class people in 1900 ate 5 portions of fruit or vegetables each day either.

The chart is mostly, what fails first?

1900 was mostly the immune system
2010 is either diet/smoking related -> heart or lungs, or if you are healthy then cancer. Cancer is mostly a function of age, the body's ability to stop it happening decreases over time whatever we do.

No, but they also didn't eat McDonalds and other fast foods. Foods and drinks created without any natural products. Since 1900 we've added tons and tons of garbage and known cancer causing materials into our food/drinks and daily use products.

Before 1900 our way of manipulating plant and animals was through selective breeding. Now its through adding chemicals and other fake matter.

Watch the documentary Food Inc among many historical documentaries on how we've "progressed" over the last century.

No. Doesn't work like that at all. Will take 500+ years (tens of generations) for natural selection to have this effect, if it even does.

Prevalance of asthma/sight problems isn't actually higher, but reporting of it is. People just dealt with it. I've read a plausible theory that increased allergies are due to lack of exposure at or around birth, i.e. our society is cleaner now.

Probably a combination of the two

Absolutely not. That's a weird mix of different claims there, let me seperate them out.

The chemicals added to food do not cause cancer or health problems, that is scaremongering and not backed up by evidence. They mostly function as nutritionless filler, but they're not actually bad.

GM organisms are exactly as healthly as selectively breeding for the same genes.

I agree our diet has changed, but I don't think it is much worse. People then were dying from underconsumption and lack of nutrients. People today are dying from overconsumption of fat/salt/sugar, and lack of nutrients. They aren't that different though, both are diet problems.

Our current cancer rates are due to 1. age and 2. smoking+age, not anything to do with food additives, GM, or electronic devices.

The misconceptions of science in this thread makes me sad.

medicine is the biggest thing really. it changed everything

ok. You keep telling yourself that chemicals that get added to food are harmless even though every few months some new one is shown by FDA to be a cancer causing agent and in another 100yrs we look back at 2010 as the dark ages of food manipulation.

I mean boys and girls are physically maturing faster than ever before couldn't possibly be related to growth hormones in animals.

Higher rates of cancers, ADHS in children (specifically related to red dye), and other defects or issues like childhood diabetes couldn't possibly be related to items we think are safe or at least in small quantities are considered safe.

Hell, 50 years ago we prescribed opium and heroine to children on a daily basis. Guess doctors and scientists could never be wrong.

go watch Food Inc. It makes it perfectly clear with evidence regarding the manipulation of our food. It shows perfectly the differences between FDA regulation of tap water (really thorough) and bottled water (non-existant). Genetic diseases and cancer and such are not rising just because we're aging 30 years longer on average. Otherwise only old people would be getting those diseases and I'm pretty positive if you looked into cancers and other diseases its increased dramatically at all age levels. Especially the younger groups as they've only lived in times where profits are more important than food quality.