Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist
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Those who live to be very old are never previously famous. Few in the world know them, and they know almost nothing of the world.
One poll in 2016 found that French people are the most pessimistic on Earth, with 81 % grumbling that the world is getting worse and only 3 % saying that it is getting better.
End-of-life businesses also offer alternatives to costly temple gravestones, such as scattering loved ones' ashes in Tokyo Bay (just don't tell the honeymooners to whom the boat is also offered).
More than 80 % of the candidate drugs that make it into clinical trials because they worked in mice do not go on to work well in humans.
Hospital doctors have far more opportunities to earn substantial kickbacks – try seeing a good specialist in China without offering a fat "red envelope".
Every year 350 tonnes of cigarette butts, the equivalent in weight to two blue whales, are cleared off the streets of Paris alone.
The income-tax code is so knotty that America has as many tax preparers per 1,000 people as Indonesia has doctors.
Diseases compete to kill people as they age; if one does not get you the next will.
Gay men's rate of anal cancer is the same as the rate of cervical cancer for women.
Julius Caesar (at the time in his 50s) swam nearly 300 metres or six lengths of an Olympic pool with his sword and purple cloak clenched between his teeth, apparently holding his official papers dry above his head.
If you had to be reborn anywhere in the world as a person with average talents and income, you would want to be a Viking.
Life's candle burns most brightly when it is about to go out.
90 % of the brain develops between the ages of zero to five, yet we spend 90 % of our dollars on kids above the age of five.
It's a bit like being a doctor in a plague year; you'll be busy for a while, but it doesn't bode well for the long term.
John Graunt tallied causes such as "the King's Evil", a tubercular disease believed to be cured by the monarch's touch.
Many albinos are murdered by people who think that their bones contain gold or have magical powers. Some witchdoctors claim that amulets made from albino bones can cure disease or bring great wealth to those who wear them. Women are at higher risk of rape because of a myth that sex with an albino can cure HIV. A gruesome trade in their body parts has spurred killings in Tanzania, Burundi, Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa.
Greater Manchester's 2.7m people make good guinea pigs for the experiment in combining health and social care – life expectancy is below average, unemployment above it.
Drones can transport blood, but they can't transport doctors, who need roads.
"When good Americans die, they go to Paris," observed Thomas Gold Appleton.
One high-class restaurant in Beijing specialises in animal penises, the eating of which is supposed to boost virility. Westerners visit for a titter, Chinese businessmen to impress their clients. (Yak penis, says the eatery's website, is a "luxury gift for close friends".) A book of "traditional, health-preserving" recipes on sale in one of Beijing's biggest state-run bookshops includes the following remedy for impotence and premature ejaculation: "18 grams of caterpillar fungus; one fresh human placenta. Wash the caterpillar fungus and the placenta separately. Place in a saucepan, with water. Stew at high temperature until the placenta is cooked. (Drink the human placenta soup once a week for one or two weeks to see results.)"
Jeanne Calment, who lived for 122 years and 164 days (longer than any other person), said the secret to her longevity was a diet rich in olive oil, port wine and chocolate. She smoked until the age of 117. Alexander Imich, who was the oldest living man (111) until he died in June, did not have a secret. Asked how he lived so long, he replied, "I don't know, I simply didn't die earlier."
Predictions without dates are easy. All trees fall; it is spotting the diseased ones that is trick.
In 1847 Ignac Semmelweis pioneered mother-friendly childbirth, insisting that doctors should wash their hands between autopsy and delivery rooms.
Anti-corruption campaigners would have nothing to cheer if the cure ended up being more harmful than the disease.
Changing a face can change nothing, but facing a change can change everything.
People around the world produce an estimated 6.4 trillion litres of urine every year.
America's hospitals are the most expensive part of the world's most expensive health system. They accounted for $851 billion, or 31 %, of American health spending in 2011. If they were a country, they would be the world's 16th-largest economy.
He learned about the "umbles": as hypothermia sets in you mumble, fumble, grumble, stumble, then finally tumble. Without help you die.
Asked the secret of his youthfulness, Benito Martinez Abrogan, 120, said he had never cheated a man or said bad things of other people.
Patriotism requires Medicare for all. Somehow, neither has caught on.
Patriotism requires Medicare for all. Somehow, neither has caught on.
Puffing 15–24 cigarettes a day, on average, robs a smoker older than 35 of five hours of life each and every day. But 20 minutes of moderate exercise a day earns almost an hour back. Alcohol wears a Janus face: the first drink of the day adds about 30 minutes per day to one's life expectancy, but each subsequent one cuts it back by 15 minutes.
The Amish in America spurn modern medicine, along with almost everything else invented since the 17th century.
The UN reckons that by 2100 the planet's population will be rising past 10.9 billion, and be much older. The median age will go up from 29 to 41, and around 28 % will be over 60. A few may even remember this article.
ERC, a research firm, says consumption per person was 999 cigarettes a year in 1990 and only 882 in 2012. Yet the appetite for cigarettes continues to rise. Smokers lit up 5.9 trillion times last year compared with 5.1 trillion in 1990. ERC tracks 123 countries, home to about 99 % of smokers. It finds the worst addicts in central and eastern Europe. Serbians each smoke a lung-blackening 3,323 cigarettes per year, more than any other nationality. Eight of the top ten countries, ranked by consumption per person, are in the former Eastern block.
The more sophisticated the patient, the less scalpel-happy the doctors. The best informed patients of all are, of course, other doctors. Sure enough, physicians went under the knife much less often than the average Ticino resident. Lawyers' wives – whom doctors have good reason to fear – had the fewest hysterectomies of all.
Walgreens is another operator of worksite clinics. One of its 358 centres is in Orlando, at the Disney theme park. It aims to treat Disney's "cast members" quickly (unblocking their huge ears and fixing their fairy wings, presumably), so they can go back to work.