Men’s Health
This morning I was told that one of my urological colleagues died on New Year’s eve. He was 46, fit, and at the peak of his career. Such a story is all too familiar to Roger and Mike Kirby, two of the editors of Men’s Health: their father died aged 49, just a few months after becoming a professor in cell biology. Left behind are young children who will not get to know their father and wives or partners who will have to cope with the loss for their remaining lives.

On average, men die five years younger than women do. The causes are age dependent: trauma in early life, cardiovascular disease and cancers later on, and suicide from the teens right through to old age. Dave Hill’s parody of the “gender gap” summarises many of the issues: “As gifts do better and better at school, boys trail behind; as women secure more and better jobs, men become more intimate with the schedules of daytime TV; while men kill themselves with increasing frequency, women lead lives that are not only longer, but also sweeter.”

The importance of Hill’s description lies not only with his assertion that the future is female but with his explicit prediction that this will be increasingly so if current trends continue. Books such as Men’s Health signpost the start of a reversal of such trends. In what other kind of book would you find contributions from urologists, family doctors, colorectal surgeons, psychiatrists, cardiologists, epidemiologists, and genito-urinary physicians as well as experts in health promotion and risk taking behaviour? Each of these disciplines is concerned with a disease process or trait that is more prevalent in men than in women.