Grim Milestones

From March 2003 to January 2007, 3,000 US Troops have been killed in Iraq.

There was lots of press about this 'grim milestone' but here is how that milestone compares with other death figures. (Forces: U.S. & Coalition/Casualties - CNN and A grim milestone in Iraq: 3,000 American deaths - IHT)

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373 US Military deaths in Afghanistan. (As of 13 March 2007.)

170 (non-US) Coalition Military deaths in Afghanistan. (As of 13 March 2007.)

98,000 die in US Hospitals each year due to medical mistakes:

Memphis, TN (PRWEB via PRWebDirect) September 11, 2006 -– Today marks the anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks where nearly 3,000 American lives were tragically lost within minutes. Multiply that number by 30 and that equals the amount of people who die every year in America’s hospitals as a result of preventable medical errors.

The horrific attacks that happened in New York exactly five years ago is an event in America’s history that will never be forgotten. But what about the estimated 98,000 who die in U.S. hospitals each year due to preventable medical errors? - PR Web Direct

155,000 die on this planet every day:

According to the CIA World Factbook, as of July, 2005, there were approximately 6,446,131,400 people on the planet, and the death rate was approximately 8.78 deaths per 1,000 people a year. According to our nifty desktop calculator, that works out to roughly 56,597,034 people leaving us every year. That's about a 155,000 a day.

Still, more people are being born than dying. The population growth rate is hovering around 1.14%, which doesn't seem like much, but last year that was (back to the calculator!) 73,485,898 more mouths to feed. As the Factbook succinctly puts it: "For the 21st century, the continued exponential growth in science and technology raises both hopes (e.g., advances in medicine) and fears (e.g., development of even more lethal weapons of war)." - Yahoo Answers

2,400,000 Americans die each year. (Yahoo Answers)

750,000 Chinese die each year from air pollution
60,000 Chinese die each year from polluted water

What do you do if the World Bank is about to come out with a major study on pollution in your country, and the news is unequivocally bad? And by bad, I mean something on the order of 750,000 of your countrymen die premature deaths each year as a result of urban air pollution, and another 60,000 die as a result of polluted water.

If you're Beijing, you simply convince the World Bank to delete the offensive sections, arguing that breaking the news might cause "social unrest." - FP Passport Blog

1,300,000 Russians die each year due to heart problems.

About 1.3 million people die of cardiovascular diseases annually in Russia, the country's chief cardiologist said Wednesday. "Cardiovascular diseases are the most frequent cause of death in Russia. The mortality rate is high compared to Western European countries, which have been experiencing a decrease in mortality rates for the past 20 years," Rafael Oganov said. "Lifestyle is the main factor that accounts for the mortality rate", he said, adding that there is no clear relation between mortality and economic status.

About 16 million Russians suffer from cardiovascular diseases, placing Russia second in the world, after Ukraine, in this respect.

Heart diseases account for 56.7% of total deaths, with about 30% involving people still of working age. Mortality among Russian men rose by 60% since 1991, four to five times higher than in Europe.

The average life expectancy for men in Russia is about 57. - La Russophobe

10,000 deaths due to Air Pollution in Tehran, Iran

Air pollution is estimated to have killed nearly 10,000 people in Tehran over a one-year period, including 3,600 in a month, Iranian officials say. - Eagle Speak

3.5 Million Tobacco-related deaths yearly. (Wiki)

17,000 killed by drunk driving in the US in one Year - MADD

45,000 die in traffic accidents in US in one year. (Yahoo Answers)

Forty-one percent of 1,672 motorcycle operators who died in single-vehicle crashes in 2004 had BAC levels of .08 g/dl or higher. Sixty percent of those killed in single-vehicle crashes on weekend nights had BAC levels of .08 g/dl or higher. (NHTSA, 2005 ) - MADD

400,000 die in traffic deaths around the world each year:

Traffic injuries are the leading cause of death in people ages 10 to 24 around the world -- a huge, overlooked and largely preventable public health problem, the World Health Organization said yesterday. - Washington Post

2,000 Finns died in 2005 as a result of alcohol abuse.

Figures for 2005 released by the state statistics agency showed alcohol killed more people aged 15 to 64 than cardiovascular disease or cancer.

Almost as many women died of alcohol-related causes as breast cancer last year.

Alcohol consumption in the Nordic country has risen steadily over the past 20 years, correspondents say.

About 2,000 Finns died of alcohol-related causes last year - 150 more than in previous years.

Each Finn drank on average the equivalent of 10.5 litres (22 pints) of pure alcohol in 2005.

Alcohol was also found to be a contributory factor in suicides, and intoxication is involved in nearly one in four deaths caused by accidents or violence, the figures showed. - BBC

3,700 American women die of cervical cancer each year. (There is now a vaccine.)

6,000 Chinese Miners die yearly.

China's poorly regulated mining industry is the deadliest in the world, with about 6,000 people killed each year in explosions, floods, collapses or other disasters. Lax safety rules and poor safety procedures are often to blame. - International Herald Tribune

Dozens of Russian military conscripts killed each year in hazing:

The (Russian) armed services have faced numerous cases of hazing in recent years. The case of 19-year-old Private Andrei Sychyov, whose genitals and legs were amputated after he was hazed, has drawn national attention to the plight of many conscripts. "Violent hazing results in the death of dozens of young soldiers every year, and serious injuries to thousands more," Human Rights Watch said in a report last year. - La Russophobe

35,000 - 50,000 Europeans died as a result of the 2003 heat wave.

- 14,802 in France
- 7,000 in Germany

1 child every 30 seconds dies of malaria

Malaria kills a child somewhere in the world every 30 seconds. It infects at least 500 million people each year, killing 1 million. Ninety per cent of those who die are in Africa, where malaria accounts for about one in five of all childhood deaths. - UNICEF

Which is partly due to the loss of the chemical DDT as a tool against malaria:

"The ban on DDT," says Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health, "may have killed 20 million children." - National Geographic

18,ooo children die each day of hunger.

Some 18,000 children die every day because of hunger and malnutrition and 850 million people go to bed every night with empty stomachs, a "terrible indictment of the world in 2007," the head of the U.N. food agency said. - Forbes

That comes out to 6,570,000 dead children in one year. So in the same time it took for 3,000 US soldiers to die in Iraq (three+ years), 19,710,000 children have died in the world of hunger, without so much concern as a little war in Iraq. Using the war-protester's absurd estimate of 100,000 deaths in Iraq, that comes out to 197 dead children for every estimated death in Iraq.

Just to put things in perspective. It almost makes Iraq sound like a safe place.

Makes you wonder where the liberal outrage is?

(I'm outraged. Just remember, it is not the US that is the problem, but these criminal Governments around the world that don't give a damn about their own people.)