Christian Scientists’ Life Expectancy?

by philg

At brunch today one of my friends looked tired from all the babies that she’s been delivering lately and the long nights on call.  Always keen to make guests in my home feel comfortable I asked Anastasia whether it wasn’t reasonable to conclude that modern medicine was almost worthless because Christian Scientists seem to live about as long as anyone else.  Anyone have a good reference to a study comparing the life expectancy of Christian Scientists with those who avail themselves fully of the American health care system?

18 thoughts on “Christian Scientists’ Life Expectancy?”

  1. Phil,
    Statistics may be great in the ‘Big Picture’, but I don’t have the faith to, um, not be alive right now.

    Thanks to medical science, I have survive such childhood injuries as a gangrenous finger and the loss of my spleen through trauma.

    Either of those would have killed me if left to prayer.

    The subsequent pneumonias (thanks to being slpeen-less) have only been remediated thanks to penicillin and pneumovax.

    Prayer would have only given me piece-o-mind as a met my maker.

    Even a recent bout of chicken-pox was aleviated by acyclovir (and more anti-biotics to avoid pneumonia) and would have been completely avoided with a modern vaccine.

    So, prayer is great to get through tough times, but I will always be willing to rely on medicine.

    As far as statistics go, I tend to think of the small percentage that rely on adequate trauma care. It’s a personal thing 🙂

  2. Completely tangentally, I would like to point out that you could use a similar argument to dismiss modern capitalism. The Christian Science monitor, (www.csmonitor.com) published by a religious organization, and funded largely by donations is one of the best (arguably *the* best) papers in the U.S…

  3. This article seems relevant:

    More Health Care Does Not Mean Longer Life, Study Finds
    August 13, 2003
    Source: The Palm Beach Post
    WASHINGTON — Elderly Floridians use more health care and have a lower mortality rate than those elsewhere in America, but does spending more lead to a longer life?
    No, is the conclusion of a package of five articles being published on the Internet today by the health journal Health Affairs.
    Most people receive enough care to respond to life-threatening situations — for example getting an antibiotic when ill or having surgery when necessary — but numerous studies over the past three decades have shown that additional use of health care has virtually no affect on reducing mortality rates, said Victor Fuchs, the Henry J. Kaiser Jr. professor emeritus at Stanford University and the lead article’s author.
    [rest of article snipped]

    If you want to read the whole thing, hold down your “shift” key while you click on this link:

    http://cahionline.org/cgi-data/industry/files/80.shtml

    (By the way, I think Christian Scientists are nuts.  And when they deny modern healthcare to their children, they should be publicly horsewhipped as an example to others.)

  4. You couldn’t really draw a good inference from such information.

    Let’s assume for a moment that Christian Scientists do have the same life expectancy as those who accept all forms of medical care.
    It’s possible (and probably) that the health benefits of clean religious living (less booze, smoking, risky behavior) merely offset the harm caused by refusal of certain forms of medical care. That doesn’t mean the medical care wouldn’t cause even *longer* life expectancy in the same people.

    You would have to control for those lifestyle variables as well.

  5. In defense of the Christian Scientists, we have to admit that at the very least they avoid various nasty iatrogenic effects:

    Student’s suicide cries out to FDA for drug warnings
    The timing is, if nothing else, eerie.
    On Feb. 2, families from around the nation who’ve had bad or deadly experiences with anti-depressant drugs attended a hearing with the Food and Drug Administration in Bethesda, Md. Their goal? To persuade the agency to urge doctors to warn patients that for some people — especially children, adolescents and young adults — anti-depressants can trigger suicide.
    On Feb. 7, 19-year-old Traci Johnson, a former Bible student in Indianapolis, was found hanged in her room at the Lilly Clinic on the Indiana University Medical School campus. The Indianapolis Police Department termed her death a suicide. She was among 100 Eli Lilly and Co. drug-trial participants who had volunteered beginning Jan. 8 to take a new anti-depressant drug duloxetine. Johnson was paid $150 a day and planned to use the money to go back to school.
    Lilly thoroughly screened Johnson and others before the drug trials, says spokesman Rob Smith. She was evaluated physically and emotionally. Most importantly, she was deemed healthy, with no history of depression. In fact, her family and friends have described her as upbeat, an active volunteer and someone who loved life.
    [rest of article snipped]

    To open a new browser window, hold down the “shift” key when you click on this link:

    http://www.indystar.com/articles/2/121004-8092-009.html

  6. Check out the following sites: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/262/12/1657

    http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Talks/cs.html

    http://www.religioustolerance.org/medical3.htm

    http://www.skeptictank.org/heal1.htm

    Seems there is a difference — even when CS mortality rate is being compared to Seventh Day Adventist mortality rate. But it is not as striking as one might imaganine, and the only issue anyone really seems to care about is children who die needlessly.

  7. Check out the following sites: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/262/12/1657

    http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Talks/cs.html

    http://www.religioustolerance.org/medical3.htm

    http://www.skeptictank.org/heal1.htm

    Seems there is a difference — even when CS mortality rate is being compared to Seventh Day Adventist mortality rate. But it is not as striking as one might imaganine, and the only issue anyone really seems to care about is children who die needlessly.

  8. Seems to me that quality of life is just about as important as straight longevity. Do any of these Florida stats, for example, point to how many of the final years are spent pain or illness free?

  9. Another example of the astonishing lack of empathy on Phil’s part (not to mention pretty lazy thinking).

  10. Note also that Christian Scientists effectively free ride on their neighbors’ immunization of children against infectious disease. (That is, their kids don’t get measles from their classmates largely because their classmates have been immunized.)

  11. Any one looking to do a study on the level of cross immunity (or now the lack of) developed by actually having the relatively minor childhood diseases and a revved up immune system. Cowpox and Smallpox come to mind. Also some immunizations have been shown in some cases to provide diminishing effectiveness. For example Measles developing in adults who were effectively immunized as a child.

  12. You have to control for variables such as income, smoking, drinking and accidental deaths.

    For example, Christian Scientists tend not to get killed at an early age in drive-by shootings. That’s one thing that really makes the average American lifespan look bad. However, that’s got nothing to do with the benefits of medical care.

  13. Given that being a Christian Scientist is a choice, it would be difficult to say anything statistically meaningful about life expectancy, etc. Basically, to control for this choice, you would need to pick a bunch of people and randomly assign which ones would be devout Christian Scientists and which ones would not. Otherwise, those who choose to remain Christian Scientists are a self-selecting group which may differ in important ways from the group who choose to remain Christian Scientists. I would imagine that someone reared as a Christian Scientist who had many health problems is more likely to conclude that Christian Science isn’t for them and convert than those who have no health problems.

    What I would be interested in seeing is life expectancy for those whose parents are Christian Scientists, but are not Christian Scientists themselves.

  14. I really hate the war in general, but one thing that makes me hate it even more is how even other opponents focus only on civilian (and even American soldier) *deaths*, as if being only maimed isn’t important.

    Likewise, I think any conclusions about modern medicine should account for every badly healed broken limb, just as it considers actual deaths.

  15. This is Philip’s sister, submitting her first comment to Philip’s Weblog. I believe that American medicine simply makes more noise than its European counterpart. Having lived in Geneva, Switzerland, as well as Paris, France, and observed the beneficial effect that things like walking and less reliance on automobiles have on people’s overall health, I believe we should put our resources into changing people’s lifestyles. This would lead to fewer doctor’s appointments for benign complaints because people’s minor aches and pains would be alleviated by simple “feel good” measures like taking a walk together on Sunday afternoons after lunch, a long-standing tradition in most of France. Having said this, many Europeans are emulating our overconsumption of junk food, etc., so be careful which Europeans to choose as the role models.

    I am the only mother in my neighborhood to eschew all these rarefied lessons (fencing, tae kwan do et al) to which one drives one’s children. Instead, my kids walk the dog, walk to the local park to shoot basketball, etc.. I save money, gas and the environment. I am trying to start a “Take Back the Parks” movement. I think it would make a tremendous difference to our nation.

    We should all invest in a Samoyed as perfect as Alex and walk him/her often. Submitted by Suzanne nee Greenspun Goode

  16. Doctors bury their mistakes. You people really have no idea how many opportunities there are for lethal mistakes and outright incompetence. Christian Scientists avoid the medical profession’s iatrogenic holocaust. They are accepting a lesser risk.

  18. Take a look at the study by Simpson:
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2769921

    Now I tried to replicate the study with later data, and couldn’t. I found that CSs lived a median of 85 years, which was longer than my control group (a midwestern private school).

    I think Simpson didn’t use good data:he used the U of Kansas alumni directory, which had a very high rate of missing entries.

    The above comments about self-selection, lifestyle, herd immunity, morbidity, avoidance of iatrogenic harm etc, were all relevant.

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