I know different sources may vary in the stats, but my numbers I had are:
16,000 aids
16,000 murder
20,000 flu
20,000 influenza
30,000 septicemia
30,000 suicides
40,000 nephrosis
41,000 car
50,000 alzheimers
70,000 diabetes
120,000 respiratory
160,000 stroke
550,000 cancer
700,000 heart disease
w/ heart disease absolutely hailed as the leading killer.
Can anyone add to this? What does wikipedia have to say about the topic (kinda hard to search for)?
I expected heart disease and cancer to lead the pack, but I didn’t expect the number of suicides to be nearly double the number of murders.
Really? Cause, as against-human-nature as suicide is, is it that hard to believe that more of the normal guys and gals you know would quietly end their own lives out of sadness and desparation then aggressively murder another American, thus risking getting shot by the cops, jailtime, death penalty- it’s no shock to me.
Spree killings are incredibly rare, and there are only an estimated 30- if not less- serial killers in the US right now. That may seem high, but given a nation of 300 million in 19,500 cities…
Here’s how the causes of death (in the USA) have changed over time
Your numbers are missing a couple of things:
Cirrohosis of the liver is a leading cause of death at 9.6 per hundred thousand. It comes in somewhere between #8 and #11 depending on the source.
You are also missing automobile accidents at about 16 per 100,000 and accidents in general at 35 per 100,000.
Many studies show that hospital accidents are a leading cause of death. That includes adverse effects of medicine, hospital related infections, as well as true errors.
Here are some figures with age ranges. Interesting - up to 35 motor accidents is the leading cause of death.
The CDC gives some very detailed information here (Big PDF).
They list the following as the biggest causes of death for 2002.
Total 100.0% 2,443,387
Diseases of heart 28.5% 696,947
Malignant neoplasms (cancer) 22.8% 557,271
Cerebrovascular diseases 6.7% 162,672
Chronic lower resperatory diseases 5.1% 124,816
Accidents 4.4% 106,742
Diabetes mellitus 3.0% 73,249
Influenza/pneumonia 2.7% 65,681
Alzheimer's disease 2.4% 58,866
Nephritis/nephrotic syndrome 1.7% 40,974
Septicemia 1.4% 33,865
Suicide 1.3% 31,655
Liver disease and cirrhosis 1.1% 27,257
Hypertension and hypertensive renal disease 0.8% 20,261
Homicide 0.7% 17,638
Pneumonitis due to solids and liquids 0.7% 17,593
Everything else 16.7% 407,900
And here is another source: