What would you die of if they found a cure for the top five causes of death?

There will always be a leading cause of death. We will never eradicate death no matter how much we spend or how many "awareness walks", bracelets or charity auctions we promote. For those of you who are obsessed with avoiding death long enough to make people want to kill you, here are the leading causes of death and what would happen if you cured them.

Heart disease: 652,091

Cancer: 559,312

Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 143,579

Chronic lower respiratory diseases:130,933

Accidents (unintentional injuries): 117,809

The causes of heart disease are:

High Blood Pressure, High Blood Cholesterol, Diabetes, Obesity, Smoking, Physical Inactivity, Gender ( males are more likely to get heart disease), Heredity and Age

(4 of every 5 deaths due to heart disease occur in people older than 65).

We can assume that  if heart disease no longer was thinning the geriatric herd, out of the 652 thousand people who died from it 521,672 would be over 65.  This would leave us with half a million more slow moving 1987 Towncars on the freeways and the average wait time at an ATM would exceed 7 minutes due to the increase in old people who can't figure out how to swipe the card and enter their pin before the time runs out.

Next up: The big C word

Cancer is the abnormal growth of cells in the body. The genes within the cell become damaged or altered and grow out of control much like a genital wart only with less stigma and more sympathy

The Top ten cancer sites:

Prostate,Breast,Lung,Colon & Rectal, Corpus & Uterine.

Causes of cancer:

Chemical carcinogens ( Smoking and chemicals) Age, Lifestyle factors(The risk of developing cancer is increased by: obesity, lack of regular exercise , poor eating habits, and drinking a lot of alcohol, Radiation, Infection, Immune system, genetic make-up.

It looks like the only way to cure cancer is to

• outlaw smoking
  
• require everyone to wear SPF 120 while outdoors
• tease overweight people to the point of self mulitation
• exercise
  
• avoid living under powerlines
• substitute soy milk for Baileys in your next irish car bomb.

Curing cancer would allow people to pursue taboo habits like smoking, eating junk, buying chinese babyfood and polishing off a case of Rolling Rock before finishing the morning paper.

So without heart disease and cancer, we would be left with another million old , drunk, smoking tan people. Then what would get us?

Stroke or cerebrovascular disease,  143,579 deaths.

Strokes are when a clot blocks an artery or a blood vessell leaks. Either of these cause a decreased bloodflow to the brain.

Causes of stroke include:

• Smoking ( come on now, is smoking really this bad?)
• High blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Artery disease
• High Cholesterol 
• Fattness
• Drugs, alcohol, and anything else associated with having fun while trying not to die.

Older people are at a greater risk and old black men are more likely to stroke out than any other group
By curing stroke and cardiovascular disease we , once again, would throw another couple dozen thousand old people back into general population. Since the elimination of cancer and heart attacks would also open the flood gates of early bird dinner diners , we now would have to find a new way recycle souls and organs.

 Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease : CLRD comprises three major diseases: chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma. Smoking accounts for the first two and the last is mainly caused by a gene that predisposes a child to asthma, coke bottle glasses, joining the German club and atomic wedgies.

Once again smoking is the culprit and if nobody smoked we would avoid losing an additional 100 or so thousand people that smell like my fathers recliner. I am running out of smoking jokes.

Next up...accidents....

By accidents we mean unintentional ( wink wink). These are car accidents, falls, bungy jump mishaps, lawn dart miscalculations ect.  I imagine that addition of the half a million old bastard who can't drink, smoke, screw or control thier anal sphincters would add to a spike in " unintentional accidents" due to the influx of drivers who stop on green, sleep on red and swirve on yellow. 

If it were feasible to get people to stop smoking, eat better, exercise and to stop falling into open manholes, what then would God use as the ultimate Whammy?

Assault/Homocide ( 7 % of deaths) would quickly take over as the number one cause of death. With so many old people staying alive longer, what little inheritance that wasn't scammed away by lottery frauds and Amish roofers would now be pissed away on casino bus trips and hookers who are willing to be paid with half dollars and JFK collectors plates. No longer  able to count on Uncle Eds horse farm being left in the will, frustrated heirs will attempt to cash in on what's left by resorting to very intentional accidents. 

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