Medicine and Law - Appworth Media

The 10 Major Causes of Death

by Joseph T. Sinclair

Why worry about things you don’t have to? Worry about things that are a danger to you. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention the following maladies are the ten most likely to kill you (2010 data). This is a manageable list that covers 75% of the ground. In other words, this is a list which you can do something about by minimizing your risk, taking preventative action, or initiating preventative behaviors. If you do so, you’ve mitigated 75% of the maladies likely to kill you.

Therefore, you can be assured that some malady is going to finish you off sooner or later. Nonetheless, if you protect yourself against these top ten causes of death, you can presumably extend your life expectancy as far into the future as possible. You can’t prevent your death ultimately, but perhaps you can prevent it from happening earlier. A heart attack at 90 is more acceptable than one at 60.

This article is not so much an article as a list to alert you. Each malady on the list includes a reference to one or several websites where you can get definitive information that will help you become aware of both symptoms and preventatives. For many of these maladies you will have to change your lifestyle to mitigate the future possible effects on yorself. And awareness is the first step towards dealing with the future.

I wrote this article only to raise questions, not provide answers. For answers, go to the medical websites referenced under each malady. And for further information consult with your physician, or your specialist physician.

The best way to use the list is to (1) familiarize yourself with the list, (2) look up the symptoms and preventatives on the referenced websites, and (3) become familiar with looking up medical information on the Web. Medical information from the Web, however, is no substitute for consulting with your personal physician; but it will certainly make you a more enlightened patient and more able to understand and deal with any adverse medical conditions that you may have.

Early detection of any disease increases your chances of survival by quite a measure. Medical science is at its best when it can treat diseases and other medical conditions in the early stages rather than the late stages.

The leading causes of death are listed together with the number of people who died and the percentage of all deaths.

1. Heart Disease (597,689 – 24.2%) At about the same rate as cancer and four times the third runner up, heart disease remains the major killer. Everyone knows someone who has heart disease and someone who has died from it. This is a common disease for which you can initiate preventative behavior and potentially extend your life.

WebMD http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/
Cleveland Clinic http://my.clevelandclinic.org/heart/default.aspx

2. Cancer (574,743 – 23.3%) Almost a prevalent as heart disease, cancer also kills four times as many people as the third runner up. Cancer represents a number of diseases, and you can watch out for the symptoms for the most common, get appropriate annual tests, and attempt to detect cancer before it gets out of hand.

WebMD http://www.webmd.com/cancer/
National Cancer Institute http://www.cancer.gov/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
MD Anderson Cancer Center http://www.mdanderson.org/patient-and-cancer-information/cancer-information/index.html

3. Respiratory Disease (138,080 – 5.6%) This is a disease that you can go a very long way to prevent just by not smoking. If you do smoke, quit today to quit shrinking your life span.

WebMD http://www.webmd.com/lung/lung-diseases-overview
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/hlw/condition.html
Mayo Clinic http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seo/basics/definition/con-20032017

4. Stroke (129,746 – 5.2%) Be ready to identify the symptoms of a stroke and immediately get the person to the hospital. Unfortunately, this doesn’t include you. It has to be someone with you at the time of your stroke. Self diagnosis is not very effective for strokes. Thus, education about stroke symptoms is in order for your family and friends. Immediate treatment (within two hours) maximizes your chances of survival and healthy recovery.

WebMD http://www.webmd.com/stroke/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/stroke/
Johns Hopkins Hospital http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/neurology_neurosurgery/specialty_areas/cerebrovascular/index.html

5. Accidents (120,859 – 4.9%) Auto accidents head the list at about twice many as death from falls. Poisoning kills about as many as falls. Elderly people with brittle bones fall and eventually die from an injury. But younger people slip in bathtubs, fall off ladders, and drown. Many people die from taking the wrong medications, incorrect doses, or ingesting household toxic substances. Fires also cause deaths. Accidents are preventable when you recognize the risks and initiate safety practices.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/index.html

6. Alzheimer’s Disease (83,494 – 3.4%) What can you do to prevent Alzheimer’s? There are a lot of theories, but nothing sure. This might be a disease that you can’t do much to prevent.

WebMD http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/default.htm?names-dropdown=AL
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/aging/aginginfo/alzheimers.htm
Johns Hopkins Hospital http://www.alzresearch.org/

7. Diabetes (69,071 – 2.8%) This is disease which requires a lot of self care and shortens your life expectancy. It also increases your risk of getting heart disease and other diseases. It’s apparent that you can develop habits which decrease your risk of getting diabetes, such as getting and keeping your diet and weight under control.

WebMD http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/default.htm?names-dropdown
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/
Mayo Clinic http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetes/basics/definition/con-20033091

8. Kidney Disease (50,476 – 2.0%)

WebMD http://www.webmd.com/a‑to-z-guides/understanding-kidney-disease-basic-information
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/projects/kidney/
Mayo Clinic http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/stroke/basics/definition/con-20042884

This disease is often causes by other diseases or long-term exposure certain drugs.

9. Influenza and Pneumonia (50,097 – 2.0%) Get your flu shot! Why wouldn’t you? Ironically, avoiding flu increases your chances of avoiding other diseases too. Learn to recognize the symptoms of pneumonia and get medical attention. Pneumonia doesn’t necessarily keep you from your daily activities.

WebMD http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/tc/influenza-topic-overview
WebMD http://www.webmd.com/lung/tc/pneumonia-topic-overview
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm
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10. Suicide (38,364 – 1.6%) Recognizing when you need help coping with life and getting such help will make it easier for you to avoid this depressing disease.

WebMD http://www.webmd.com/a‑to-z-guides/warning-signs-of-suicide-topic-overview
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/suicide/index.html
American Foundation for Suicide prevention http://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide
Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/suicide
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

The lists are different by age. Below are six more top ten lists together with percentages.

Age 1–9:

1. Accidents (32.4%)

2. Cancer (11.8%)

3. Congential malformations (10.1%)

4. Homicide (7.5%)

5. Heart disease (3.4%)

6. Influenza and pneumonia (1.9%)

7. Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease (1.7%)

8. Stroke (1.5%)

9. Benign tumors (1.4%)

10. Septicemia (1.4%)

Age 10–24:

1. Accidents (40.7%)

2. Suicide (15.0%)

3. Homicide (14.9%)

4. Cancer (6.4%)

5. Heart disease (3.5%)

6. Congenital malformations (1.7%)

7. Stroke (0.7%)

8. Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease (0.7%)

9. Influenza and pneumonia (0.7%)

10. Diabetes (0.6%)

Age 25–44:

1. Accidents (26.2%)

2. Cancer (13.7%)

3. Heart disease (12.3%)

4. Suicide (11.0%)

5. Homicide (6.0%)

6. Chronic liver disease (2.6%)

7. HIV (2.4%)

8. Stroke (2.2%)

9. Diabetes (2.1%)

10. Influenza and pneumonia (1.0%)

Age 45–64:

1. Cancer (32.3%)

2. Heart disease (21.2%)

3. Accidents (6.8%)

4. Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease (3.8%)

5. Chronic liver disease (3.7%)

6. Diabetes (3.5%)

7. Stroke (3.4%)

8. Suicide (3.1%)

9. Kidney disease (1.5%)

10. Septicemia (1.4%)

Age 65+:

1. Heart disease (26.5%)

2. Cancer (22.1%)

3. Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease (6.6%)

4. Stroke (6.1%)

5. Alzheimer’s disease (4.6%)

6. Diabetes (2.7%)

7. Influenza and pneumonia (2.4%)

8. Kidney disease (2.3%)

9. Accidents (2.3%)

10. Septicemia (1.5%)

Age 85+:

1. Heart disease (30.8%)

2. Cancer (12.4%)

3. Stroke (7.1%)

4. Alzeimer’s disease (7.1%)

5. Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease (5.0%)

6. Influenza and pneumonia (3.1%)

7. Kidney disease (2.4%)

8. Accidents (2.4%)

9. Diabetes (2.0%)

10. Hypertension (1.5%)

Interesting facts:

The number of deaths in the US in 2010 was 2,468,435.

The life expectancy was 78.7 years.

The percentages for both men and women in the top ten are close to the same.

An often overlooked source of good medical information is the series of classes run for the benefit of patients by various medical groups. Many of the classes are designed to help patients deal with diseases they already have. Other classes, however, instruct patients on preventative medicine. Whether these classes are offered by a hospital, an HMO, a physicians’ group, or a health insurance company, they will provide you not only with medical information that is sound but also give you a chance to ask questions and get answers.

Trademark Due Diligence

by Joseph T. Sinclair

What’s important, a domain or trademark? For 20 years we have been led to thinking that domain names are all important. They’re unique. They’re cheap. And if you can find one that fits, you’re in business in the new cyberworld.

But now it’s a mobile world, and the domain-name trolls have taken all the new mobile domain names. You can’t find a domain name for your line of book apps with any of the new mobile words in it (e.g., app). The question is, do you need the domain name?

Keep in mind that people go to iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, or Windows Store for apps. They don’t go to your website. Consequently, domain names are irrelevant. Sure, you probably need a website to support your app sales effort, but the website is not going to necessarily be where people find the apps or where the sales take place.

Then how do you pick a name and preserve it for your own? The old fashion way—register it as a trademark. What are the steps? First is the research. Let’s say you want to use “AgApp” for your agriculture publishing business.

Decide what you will be using the name for. The trademark laws require specificity. Let’s say you will write and sell book apps on gardening and raising animals under the brand AgApp. The following are the steps for your research:

1. Search Google for agapp, ag app, ag-app, and other similar combinations (e.g., appag). You want to make sure no one else is using the name to sell apps about gardening and raising animals or anything even remotely related.

2. Search iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Windows Store, and other app sources on the same words in #1. Make sure no one else is using the name to sell apps about gardening and raising animals or anything even remotely related.

3. Check the trademark registry on the same words in #1 to make sure no one else has a trademark for apps on gardening and raising animals or anything even remotely related .

4. Check domain names. If agapp.com is available, grab it. Otherwise forget it. It’s not important. Get a domain name like ag-app.com, agappmedia.com, or something else that’s available.

5. Search the Internet for agapp.com, ag-app.com, agapp.net, and other similar domains. Again, you want to make sure no one else is using the name to sell apps about gardening and raising animals or anything even remotely related.

If no one else is using the name to sell apps on gardening and raising animals or anything even remotely related, apply for a trademark. It costs $275 to $475 depending on how you apply.

The point is that all names are up for grabs unless someone has used them for a specific commercial purpose or registered them as trademarks. Registering a domain name with a domain name registrar or a corporate name with a state secretary of state doesn’t mean anything in regard to using a name to sell goods or services. It’s the use in commerce and the trademark registration that make the name yours exclusively.

Registering your own trademark is tricky. Buy the Nolo Press book on trademarks to use as your guide (many people get an attorney). The toughest part is deciding what class your sales are in (45 classes) and what the wording will be to describe your particular use of the trademark.

An attorney contracted by the Patient Office will review your application to decide whether he/she will approve your trademark. Common words or common word combinations may not be trademarkable. And the attorney will squeeze your description of use down to your narrowest use of the trademark.

Trademark registration is unforgiving. If you don’t do it right, you have to start over and pay the registration fee again. Since the fees are high and the process long (up to a year assuming no complications), a $20 investment in the Nolo book is good insurance.

Why go to all this bother? After all, whoever uses a trademark first for a specific commercial activity owns the trademark, even without registration. The problem is, anyone with deep pockets will steal your trademark without a qualm. When that happens, a registration will provide you with much more legal power.

Apple stole iBook from a small-time entrepreneur who used it as a trademark first. It’s still in litigation. If the entrepreneur had registered the trademark, Apple would have just purchased the trademark from him. He most likely would not have had to sue Apple.

My experience in trying to find a trademarkable name for a business that publishes book apps was a nightmare. I evaluated over 16 dozen word combinations before I came up with a name I can use. Many of the names I choose to evaluate were clever, but they didn’t pass a comprehensive review.

If all else fails, you can’t go wrong choosing a river for your name. I suggest: Susquehanna, Loire, Yangtze, Euphrates, Suwannee, Rhine, or Amazon. Oops. Strike that the last suggestion.

A Legal Nightmare

by Joseph T. Sinclair

Remember the good old days when we could buy a digital typeface (font) or collection for a reasonable price and didn’t have to worry about anything? Going back 25 years I shelled out $50 here and $50 there (typically for a collection of 20 to 30 fonts), even $200 once, for a impressive collection of fonts which I have used routinely for printing books, newsletters, reports, brochures, business cards, office documents, and the like for all these years. It never occurred to me that I couldn’t use such fonts for anything and everything. But at the least, it was understood that buying the font was for the purpose of unlimited publishing.

Today it’s a new ballgame. With the recent advent of smart phones, tablets, book apps, ebooks, and commercial PDF publishing, there are suddenly many more ways to use fonts that may or may not be covered by the old licensing under which we bought the fonts for print publishing. And we’ll never know what our original licensing provisions were. Who keeps the licensing documents—especially for 25 years?

It’s time to start over and pay again, and pay for each use. Here are some of the probable uses requiring an appropriate license:

Embedded in a website using the @font function of CSS 3
Embedded in ebooks
Embedded in each ebook
Embedded in periodicals
Embedded in each periodical
Embedded in book apps
Embedded in each book app
Embedded in software
Embedded in each program
Embedded in PDFs
Embedded in each PDF
Embedded in a server

All of the above may depend on the traffic (e.g., website), the volume published (e.g., book apps), or the duration (e.g., one year). And there might be a different price for each or a price that covers certain groupings (e.g., ebooks and PDFs).

For many fonts, just understanding the pricing is a challenge. For instance, if you publish a book as an ebook, the font is usually reasonably priced. But if you publish the book as a book app instead, it usually comes under the “embedded in software” category which is typically priced very high (e.g., up to thirty times the price of ebook embedding) thus punishing those who publish information in such a format.

If you buy a font costing $300 (10 x the desktop font) for using in book apps (treated as software), it might cover all book apps you publish, or you might have to pay separately for each title or each year. And what have we been talking about? Just one typestyle of one typeface (one font). Typically we use four typestyles (four fonts) of each typeface. Thus, to use one typeface (text) with four typestyles in a book app could cost $1,200 for each title @10x or as much as $3,600 @ 30x. Throw in a different font for headings, and the fare goes up even more. That’s a tough sale for font makers to make.

But that’s not the worst. After all, it’s only money. The worst is understanding and keeping track of the licensing agreements. Most licensing agreements are incomprehensible. Just when you think you’ve understood the licensing for using the font one way, three months or three years later you want to use it another way; and you can’t figure out whether you’re covered or have to buy the font again. In many cases, you can’t even get prices for some ordinary uses without contacting the font maker for special pricing. And don’t think that at one website operated by one font maker that all the licensing agreements are the same (as you might expect). They vary widely from font to font.

And what about the colophon? A colophon has been used in printed books to inform the world about the typographical aspects of one’s book design—to give credit to typographers. With the uncertain legalities of digital publishing, the colophon becomes an invitation to litigation. It’s not something you will want to include in a digital book.

The bottom line is that using fonts for digital information presentations is a legal nightmare, not to mention in many cases it entails comparatively outrageous pricing. When I call it a legal nightmare, I am understating the case because there are additional issues I haven’t even covered in this post.

What is one to do?

Well, the problem seems to be partially solved by subscription services for website embedded fonts (e.g., fonts.com – http://fonts.com). But that’s limited to website font embedding. It’s not a comprehensive solution for all digital uses.

The answer seems to be fonts provided under free licensing agreements. It’s not that free fonts are such a good deal. I certainly don’t mind paying for fonts, and I respect the talent that goes into top quality font making. But many free licensing agreements are worry free. You can use the fonts for anything once you have them. You don’t have to consult your attorney every time you want to put one of your fonts to use.

It’s true that free licensing agreements can be just as arcane as commercial licensing agreements. But there are a limited number of standard agreements that you can learn and keep in mind (e.g., SIL open font license – http://www.sil.org/). What you are looking for are standard agreements that allow all uses of a font.

Without doing a survey of what’s available under free licensing, three sources stand out. One is Google Fonts (http://www.google.com/fonts). Another is Font Squirrel (http://www.fontsquirrel.com/). The third is Dafont (http://www.dafont.com/). All are useful collections. At these locations you can find a wide selection available. They are not only worry free—administration free—but price free too. Seems too good to be true.

In fact, some of these fonts are not very high quality. But many are excellent. With careful choosing, these sources are good places to pick up a set of basic fonts for information publishing and even some display fonts with remarkable personalities. These are not the only free licensing sources, although they’re great places to start your search.

What the font industry needs is a standard understandable commercial font licensing scheme that everyone can come to know. In fact, there are such licensing schemes for free licensing. One would hope that the industry can come up with something for paid licensing that would benefit not only publishers but also font makers who want establish an expansive market for their fonts.

In my particular case, I have a reasonable budget for buying fonts for my startup publishing business. I have no time for deciphering licensing agreements and keeping track of a myriad of legal provisions. Consequently, I have assembled the basic fonts I need from Google Fonts and Font Squirrel. I’ve spent some time separating the wheat from the chaff, something I would have preferred not to do. Yet I‘ve not had to spend a dime, something I was willing to do.

I’m just one very small publishing business. There are tens of thousands of us, however, and only hundreds of larger publishers. One would think there’s a market of folks like me sadly neglected.

What I suspect is that there’s a ample amount of pirating going on by those who can’t slow down to play the font makers legal games but who otherwise would buy fonts. This is not good for the font makers, but it’s not good for publishers either. Publishers need high quality fonts and innovation in typography and are willing to pay for them, understanding that a monetary incentive works well. Nonetheless, an incoherent, misaligned, and inefficient exchange system will always give rise to black markets, smuggling, and pirating. And that’s where we seem to be today with fonts used in digital information products.

The author of these articles, Joseph T. Sinclair, is the author of twenty How To books published by national publishers.

For low-cost non-exclusive reprints rights for these articles, contact sales@AppworthMedia.com.