Did They Really Have to Put it That Way

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Sometimes a headline leaves you scratching your head a bit. Take one I saw today about the passing of former Fed Reserve chair, Alan Greenspan. It literally read this way: "Alan Greenspan, former Fed Reserve chair, dies with cause of death revealed." I mean, that's an appropriate headline if someone very young suddenly gets found in a hotel room or in some other circumstance. But Alan Greenspan was 100 years old. "Cause of death revealed"—as though there was going to be some shocking twist in the plot. He had Parkinson's, and that was fairly well known. It was also very well-known he was a very old man. Even inside the article it said, "He died from complications of Parkinson's disease." That's kind of a separate thing but even using the word "complications" when referring to a disease that kills someone is a bit...kind of a weird way of putting things. Isn't every disease's symptoms complicating living? That's how a disease kills you. It complicates what keeps you alive. The more appropriate headline would have been: "Alan Greenspan, former Fed Reserve chair, dies at 100." Then you can mention in the article he had Parkinson's. But what killed him, really? Probably that when most people are in the upper double digits and certainly in the triple digits... Biology is going to do what biology does. Disease or not.