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Show Medicine for Longer Life Whv do manufacturers of prescription drues introduce hun- dreds of new medicines each year? One very important reason, the Health News Institute points out, is that the nature of disease changes with the changing pattern of our population. For. example, since 1950, the number of Americans over 65 has jumped from 12,000,000 to 15,000,000. Population experts estimate that by 1970 the proportion of senior citizens among us will increase still further, while the percentage of Americans between the ages of 25 and 44 will decline. Why does this change in the pattern of population call for new forms of medicine? Primarily because disease problems change from age group to age group. Take the case of heart disease. In 1956 more than 854,000 Americans died from some form of circulatory and heart diseases. Of these approximately 609,000 were over 65. This means that 42 of every 1,000 Americans over 65 died of circulatory and heart diseases, as compared with 1.6 deaths from circulatory and heart diseases per every 1,000 Americans under that age. Cancer is another example of how disease patterns change with age. Although cancer strikes people at every age, it is particularly virulent among those over 65. In 1956 some 247,000 Americans died of cancer. Of these, about 130,000 were over 65, while 117,000 were under 65. Broken down, this meant that 906 of every 100,000 Americans over 65 died from some form of malignancy, wihle only 77 per 100,000 of those Americans Ameri-cans under 65 died of cancer. As a result of this changing pattern of age and disease, the HNI points out, American pharmaceutical manufacturers are diverting more and more of their research into the development of medicines for heart disease, cancer and the chronic ailments which best us in old age. They feel it is not enough that Americans today live longer than ever before. Equally important is to make sure that these "golden" years of life and truly golden, free from the pain of cancer, the crippling of heart disease and arthritis, or the mental defeneration of senility. |