There are Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
Here's a very interesting, 14-minute video that sheds light on one reason Americans are so unhealthy: It's not that they've gotten sicker; it's that we're discovering things wrong with them that would never have hurt them in the past. Perhaps Americans in general really are less healthy than we once were, but the misuse of medical statistics is no way to prove that, nor to treat it.
It's worth your 14 minutes, despite a few bizarre misreadings of the script, and one word that somehow slipped through the profanity filter.
Pay special attention to the problem of overaggressive treatment that is encouraged by early detection of problems that would have been better left alone. I speak here from personal experience: My mother-in-law was saved from the trauma, expense, and harmful side effects of aggressive treatment of a cancerous mass only because she had something more urgently wrong that needed to be dealt with first. By the time she was ready for the cancer treatment, the mass had disappeared completely on its own.
