Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, often says that when his uncle was president in the early 1960s, Americans were much healthier than they are now. People were thinner and had lower rates of chronic disease, he recalls. Fewer children had autism, allergies or autoimmune diseases.
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“If R.F.K. Jr. makes the statement that more people are dying of chronic diseases now than in Jack Kennedy’s era, that’s undoubtedly true — we’ve got twice as many people, and a much larger chunk are old folks who have much higher chronic disease rates,” said Kenneth Warner, dean emeritus of the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
“Does that mean we’re doing worse than back then?” he added. “Absolutely not.”
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But it is true that rates of certain malignancies, particularly breast cancer and colorectal cancer, are rising among younger Americans. Rates of some childhood cancers have also increased.
