NEW YORK, Jan 20 (Reuters Health) -- Many Americans believe that more
people will die from gun violence, homicide, car accidents and suicide in the
future, according to results of a new survey.
Asked to predict if the risk of certain causes of death will change in the
next 10 years, over half of respondents to a recent Harris poll predicted more
deaths due to gun violence, homicide, traffic accidents, suicide, and AIDS.
But they were not totally pessimistic -- those polled said that in 10
years, fewer people will die of breast cancer, diabetes, and prostate cancer.
According to the telephone poll, conducted the first week of December
among a scientific sample of 1,009 adults, only about 25% of respondents thought
that guns, murder, car accidents, and suicide would kill fewer people in 10
years than they do now.
Recent figures suggest that this minority is probably right. "The
public... appears to be dramatically misinformed -- at least if recent trends
continue," writes Harris Chairman Humphrey Taylor. He noted that homicide rates
with and without guns have been falling, as have automobile deaths.
More than half of those polled thought that diseases such as breast
cancer, diabetes, lung cancer, stroke, heart attack, and lung cancer would kill
fewer people in 10 years. According to Taylor, however, cancer-related deaths
have been increasing, partly because people are living longer. Despite this,
more people predicted cancer deaths would fall than predicted a rise in these
causes of death.
And although 65% of respondents expected diabetes to kill fewer people in
10 years, experts have predicted a diabetes epidemic resulting from the
increasing incidence of obesity among Americans.
Taylor suggests that people may have "more faith in science and medicine
than in society or human nature." In addition, people's beliefs may reflect
media coverage, which tends to focus on crime, violence, and suicide on the one
hand, and the miracles of medicine and technology on the other. Yet another way
to interpret the findings "is that the public is remarkably uninformed about
real health risks," according to Taylor.
Interestingly, very few people seem to expect things to stay the same. For
the 11 causes of death listed in the poll, only 5% or fewer thought the number
of people dying from each of them would remain unchanged.
"These beliefs show great confidence in the power of new and improved
medical treatments... (and) very little confidence in human nature and society's
ability to contain, let alone reduce, human behaviors, which cause intentional
or accidental death," concluded Taylor.
