The National Center for Health Statistics shows that average life expectancy for American men in 2022 was down to 74.8 years, 5.4 years lower than American women.

This widening gap is reason enough for FDA to express concern that men are being left behind when it comes to government intervention. Yet the U.S. is not alone. Worldwide, governments seem to have little interest in the health of men. Like government-union-run schools when they cut funding for programs geared toward high achievers, the rationale is 'they'll be fine'.(1) FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, MD, says men are losing 330 million years of life annually. 


 Joan Sorolla/Flickr, CC BY

Cultural evangelists will dismiss that as lifestyle or choice, the way they dismiss political conservatives being nearly impossible to find among tenured faculty in science academia, but that is part of the problem. The loudest people are most likely to pummel men with an ageist and sexist narrative, without acknowledging they promote problems for men by dominating culture that puts too much pressure on them - it's all your fault - and blame. In no other case is an alarming difference in suicide dismissed by blaming the victims. That culture pressures men into being 'tough', which means not going to a doctor until it is too late, is not the fault of the the men being stigmatized by elites manufacturing what masculinity means, often so they can then tell men how toxic they are.

All while telling men how stupid they are, again in ageist and sexist fashion. It's rare to find a TV commercial where the father isn't a buffoon barely kept functional thanks to his spouse or children, unless it is an ad for a home improvement store or a new cancer medication.

Dr. Cardiff has many arguments for why FDA needs to start caring about men as much as they care about manufacturing epidemics like teen vaping so they have products to ban. If history is any indication, no one will care until it is too late. Then society may find out men are somewhat important after all, and not just like the solar power of the economy.

NOTE:

(1) If you can afford it, options are available for your kids outside union control. The Governor of California declared he is moving 200 miles away from the state capitol, so he can enroll his family in a private school that costs $60,000 per year. Will that hurt him among the public school educators he claims to support? Education unions give 93% of their donations to his party nationwide, so in a politically skewed like California he won't lose a single vote. Unions instead will say he is right to move, and the solution to that is even more funding than the 40% of the state budget they get in the California constitution.