Gerald Grob, Henry E. Sigerist professor of history of medicine emeritus at Rutgers University, spoke to about 300 students, faculty, staff, and community members about the history of death and disease in America.

“I know that what I’m talking about is not a popular subject,” Grob said. “People often ask why I’m so flippant and it might frighten some people, but the fact is that’s life – something is going to get you and the reality is we will all die in the end.

“The end result is fixed, but how we get there is what changes throughout history,” Grob said in the Sun Room Wednesday night.

Grob spoke about the ancient history of medicine, but focused on death and disease, emphasizing the medical progress in heart disease and cancer in America since World War II.

“There is very little evidence that connects heart disease or cancer to behavior. I wish it were that simple that you could control your behavior and not develop these diseases,” he said.

“Today we focus too much on risk factors, which are at most correlational studies, not causations of these diseases.”

Risk factors in medical science are a common trend today, but they do not fit the mortality curve in any way, Grob said.

“I really agreed with him about the fact that we need to stress that correlation does not mean causation,” said George Baren, curator of the Veterinary Medicine Museum.

Experts in the medical science field do not know how or why heart disease has declined and cancer has remained stable because the evidence changes day to day and we cannot control most aspects of death and disease, Grob said.

“There is nothing you can do beforehand to prevent cancer, with the exception of smoking being a direct cause of lung cancer,” Grob said. “The ethology of cancer, much like that of heart disease, is still a mystery today.”

Grob said young people have relatively little risk for heart disease or cancer.

“There are some benefits to screening, but for the most part the purpose of screening is overstated, because we often don’t know what you do once you identify it.” he said.

“There’s so many options, but sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.”