By MIKE MAGEE
Clearly the Harris-Walz ticket has done its homework. Last week, the above book appeared in the stack of prominent thought leaders: “The Demography of Human Evolution.” This is a 780-page academic tour de force read by veteran scientist Oskar Burger, head of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and the Laboratory of Evolutionary Biodemography.
The Institute was founded in 1917 in Berlin, the first director of which was Albert Einstein. Today, researchers can (in the age of “alternative facts”) to separate justified belief of opinions. The main focus is on “categories of thought, evidence, and experience” at the intersection of “science and surrounding culture.”
This is the field Demographics of Human Evolutiona mixture of natural science and social science. Demographers study populations and explore how humans behave, organize and develop by focusing on birth, migration, and aging.
This has been a lonely year in American politics. First, the fallout from the Dobbs decision caught Republicans with their electoral pants down on reproductive freedom referendums in Kansas, Michigan, Kentucky and Vermont. Migration from Democrats in the South to former red states like Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina has turned purple. And this summer, octogenarian candidates from both parties have been angry, literally.
Until July 21, 2024, the race for the Presidency is between two elderly candidates with visible mental and physical disabilities. The winner is slated for a term that will extend beyond his 80s.
The emergence of Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee is a reflection of voters who are uncomfortable with the fact that they cannot see the reality of their age. It also suggests that Americans, especially Gen X’ers, are fed up with the Boomer dominance of increasingly multicultural American life – fed up with the widening income gap, attacks on reproductive freedom, and declining life expectancy in America.
But why the sudden interest in “Human Evolutionary Demography?” The answer lies in the numbers. Back in 2012 Oskar Burger studied Sweden and noted that in 1800 life expectancy was 32 years. They got an additional 20 years in the next century, and another 30 years in the year 2000.
What stumped Burger did not succeed over two hundred years. But he focused on the question, “Why did humanity take so long to advance?” Bottom line, we left chimpanzees in the evolutionary dust about 6.6 million years ago. We limped, not very well, for the last 200 years. In the past century, some time only 4 of the history of 8000 plus human generations, we took.
This period coincided with rapid scientific and technological progress, cleaner air and water, greater nutritional support, better education and housing, government policies related to public health, and the creation of safety nets for the most vulnerable citizens.
But in the past decade, growth in US life expectancy has stalled. For the first time, we actually experienced a year-over-year decline from 2014 to 2019. For the past decade, the number has grown by less than 1/2 of 1%. When first studied, refusal was blamed for losses in working-age adults due to trauma, addiction, suicide or “death of despair.”
But a new study shows losses due to poor maternal/fetal care, especially in red states, and made worse by the Dobbs decision. Another complicator has losses starting at the age of 65 from complications of heart disease and diabetes, made worse by obesity and lack of health care follow-up.
This prompted the Max Planck Institute to alert US health experts: “Our findings suggest that the US faces a ‘double jeopardy’ of midlife and old-age mortality trends, with the latter being more severe.”
Women’s reproductive advocates say it’s a “triple threat” that calls for grass-roots advocacy focused on access now, and political victories up and down the ballot in November. In his words, “Today, and every day, we work to ensure that every patient seeking sexual and reproductive health care can access it, and to build a just world that includes national access to abortion for all – no matter what.”
If this is true, a careful reading of “The Demographics of Human Evolution” can lead to a 3-prong approach for health policy leaders in the Harris-Walz campaign:
- An expanded safety net to overcome “death of despair.”
- The ACA’s expansion to Universal Health Insurance to address the chronic disease burden of older Americans.
- Federal guarantees of reproductive freedom and open access to reproductive care.
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and regular THCB contributor. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex. (Grove/2020)
