Reply #5: Well, Minchin is jabbing at straw men a bit [View All]

[salvorhardin]

Nobody, at least nobody sane, thinks the pharmaceutical industry only has our best interests at heart. However, there are some people, like Storm, who go so far the other way, who think that anything natural must be good for you, and modern pharmaceuticals haven't helped at all.

As for the average lifespan, yeah, I groaned at that too. It's not so much that people are living longer but rather they're just not dying as early. I watched a PBS Nova special about Stonehenge the other night and the archaeologists pointed out that even the Atone Age Britons who first built Stonehenge likely lived quite long lives if they made it out of their youth. The upper end of our longevity has been pushed a little bit in the last 50 years, but it's not as if no one's grandparents weren't alive in the 1900s.