Monday, November 08, 2004

I can't stop thinking about the abstraction of bathtub curve for human mortality. Although in affluent societies, infant mortality has been reduced to almost nil, if you extend the curve to before birth on the left of the curve, the death rate keeps going up. There are 4 abortions to every 10 live births, which makes for approximate death rate of at least .3 if taken back to near conception. So if you've just been conceived, the chances of dying are as much as if you were 90 years old or therabouts. If you make it to 2 years old, the death rate is about .0002, for your nurtured period of your life to about 15y/o where it jumps up to about .001.

1 comment:

Dr Clam said...

I shall have to write an expansion of my recent "I disagree with everything you say" comment which actually sounds sane! Hmm, if that is possible...
Apropos the bathtub curve, the natural death rate between conception and birth is at least 30%. There is a curve very like the bathtub curve that I have to draw to illustrate the probabilistic basis for my position on abortion.