To what extent is the increased longevity of women down to them being more risk averse (and usually in less risky occupations) than men?
Are there any reliable figures on the life expectancies of transexuals, and how do they stack up against people who aren’t transexual?
That’s an almost impossible question to answer because all things aren’t equal. Men do take more risks, but they also take less care of their own health which isn not risk taking behaviour per se. Rather men often neglect there health because they can not afford the time or the money to look after it properly. In addition to that there is much less pent on male specific health care than on femlae specific.
Certainly risk taking behaviour plays a role, but a lot of it appears to be not risk taking but simply a lack of options.
I don’t see what you imagine this would tell you even if such figures did exist. If the difference was purely biologicial or purely then transexuals still wouldn’t help isolate it because they have spent part of there lives biologically one sex and part biologically another. Imagine that we discover that M-F transexuals die less of heart disease. We can never know whether that might be due to hormonal differences, or due to having lived their life very differently with less stress and fewer risks. As such the history of transexuals can;t tell us anything because they will not be consistent in either behaviour or biology.
The reverse is true.
P.S. You might want to check your reply before posting it.
I think you might like to provide us with some evidence for this extraordinary claim.
I have honestly never before heard anyone dispute that there is much less spent on male specific health care than on female specific. It is so uncontroversial that even those who endorse the situation don’t try to deny it as you have, they simply justify it. Note that I am not seeking to debate whether it is justifiable, simply pointing out the fact itself is unassailablw AFIAK and woudl seriously like to see a reputable source that disputes this.
For example the National Institutes of Health–the federal focal point for medical research in the U.S.–spends nearly four times as much on female-specific health research as on male-specific research. ÊAnd though the average man is as likely to die from prostate cancer as the average woman is from breast cancer, the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Cancer Institute spends three and a half times as much money on breast cancer research as on prostate cancer research.
In fact, prostate cancer makes up 37% of all cancer cases but receives only 5% of federal research funding. In addition, the breast cancer postage stamp has raised over $25 million for breast cancer research since it began in 1998, while a 1999 bill proposing a similar stamp for prostate cancer research was unsuccessful.
I could go on quoting such statitsics essentially indefinitely from largew federal instutions like the NIH through to state corrections departments down to individual hospoitals. I honestlyhave never seen any organisation that did not spend far more on female specific helath than on male specific helath. I would now like to see your statistics which show the opposite to be true.
You might want to cite the hell outta that, fella. :dubious:
flamewar Straightdope style!
I love the Dope.
Not wanting to speak for Walloon (but apparently I’m going to try anyway) you could argue that the medical baseline is male-centric with female medical responses being seen as x% from that baseline. Obviously this would be due to the historic nature of medical testing/theory and not necessarily true today. Obviously it would be a GD topic.
I guess you could argue that but then it’s kind of like arguing that treating bullet wounds is male-specific health – you’ll be eaten alive by feminists who want to be shot too.
From memory, according to studies done on nuns and monks, who live very similar lifestyles ( no childbirth for the women, no risktaking for the men ) I recall the difference between the sexes is five years or less in women’s favor.
Really ? I have. Generally by counting all non-female specific research as being male specific. i.e. “Only 18% of research money is spent on women”, not mentioning only 9 % is spent on men. *
So the greater longevity is obviously not caused by greater statistical acumen.