Both Causing & Preventing Heart Attacks: Is Modern Technology a Zero Sum Game?

Call it a “High Tech Wash” (At Least at the Societal Level)

“Racing the Clock, Saving the Heart:  Faster Care Helps Death Rate Plunge 38% in Decade.” 

–Headline; NYT (June 21, 2015)

“A study published in 2012 that tracked women for 10 years concluded that stressful jobs increased the risk of a cardiovascular event by 38%.”

–“No Time to Be Nice at Work”; NYT (June 21, 2015)

Here’s one inescapable takeaway from two, very different articles in today’s Sunday New York Times (yes, I treat myself to a print copy on weekends:  more relaxing; see next).

Thanks mainly to increased stress, modern technology is giving us more heart attacks.

However, thanks to advances in technology and response time (ultimately, due to . . . technology), modern medicine is also treating and preventing those heart attacks better and faster.

There’s even a startlingly specific number associated with technology’s offsetting benefits and costs:  38%.

The 38% Coincidence; A Vicious Cycle

Which begs the obvious question:  collectively, at least, how does that leave society better off?

If the answer is, “it doesn’t,” that certainly tells us where to focus our resources and attention . . .

P.S.:  Another stressor (and negative feedback loop):  navigating and paying all those medical and insurance bills, which requires making more money, which increases stress, which leads to more illness . . .

See also, “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande.