Final Exits

I am thumbing through a rather interesting book I received for Christmas titled, Final Exits. It's basically a paperback encyclopedia that categorizes all the ways people die. Just the sort of thing I find particularly fascinating. However, one of the more interesting things I read in the book was on the author's reasons for putting it together/ things he learned while making the book. He writes:

"Of course, the medical aspect of how a person dies has remained the same since prehistoric times - the heart finally stops beating - yet many things that have caused the death have changed. With each advance in technology we discovered brand new ways to become deceased. As a student of Anthropology and sociology, I saw how the connection in the variety of ways in which people met their destiny exemplified clearly how they lived. Thus, death becomes a benchmark of our culture, and I set out to gauge the rising water, to discover how it was we died, and how we die now."

What caught my attention the most was how death is a "benchmark of our culture." That being said, did you know that there are 11,345 annual fatalities at U.S. Malls? In 2004 alone Americans took 3 billion doses of diet pills which led to 54 deaths and approx. 1,000 reports of serious complications. Since 1985 there have been 2,871 deaths from Botox injections. And there were 11,345 visits to the emergency room in 2002 because of poisoning due to rouges or liquid foundations.

Very interesting stuff. There are way more ways to die than I could ever imagine. Amazing how the way people die speaks volumes about the societies in which they live.