Arts students 'die young'

"Although the precise cause is unclear, a study of thousands of former students of Glasgow University found that arts and law students were most likely to die early.

Science, engineering and medical students lived longer, although medics were most likely to die from alcohol-related causes...

Arts students were most likely to die from lung cancer or other forms of respiratory disease.

Medics, on the other hand, were more likely to die as a result of accidents, suicide and violence...

The reasons for this difference may be found back in the childhood of the students, say the researchers.

Medical and science students were far more likely to come from more affluent backgrounds, they said.

They wrote: "Arts students were more likely to have experienced socioeconomic deprivation in childhood."

However, it could simply be the case that the "arts" culture was more likely to result in a student who smoked."


From the Royal Society of Medicine website:

"Medics were... the heaviest smokers at university... Doctors smoked more than anyone else as students, but also "may have been particularly likely to quit". This would explain why the lawyers tended to die young, despite being likely to have affluent lifestyles - they smoked almost as heavily as the medics and kept on smoking."

Original journal article also available from the same page:

"More members of the medical profession have lower overall mortality than that in the general population, despite higher rates of death from suicide and accidents."


Time to change faculty... But not to Law - this is yet another reason not to do law! (Though the article doesn't say why Law students die earlier)