McCain-Obama Health Risk Statistics

Wow! So the 72 year old has a higher chance of not finishing his presidential term than the 47 year old? Fascinating!

This “nice” analysis does not provide any sources for its figures or link to a longer report. This “nice” analysis apparently only uses age, smoking, and gender as predictors, which is somewhat lazy given the specific biographical information available for each candidate and somewhat disingenuous given that senators campaigning for the presidency for more than a year are presumably in better shape than most of the persons on whom the figures were apparently based. This “nice” analysis contains plenty of citations to McCain’s history of health problems (which were not factored into the analysis), but no mention of race, one of three demographics (the others being gender and age) that the CDC employs in its life tables (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_09.pdf). A “nice” analysis would have also included personal family histories and specific reference to the candidates’ medical records, which have been either released or made available to selected members of the media.

But, then again, if the purpose was only to make a political point, “nice” job.