ABSTRACT
A little more than a century ago, infectious diseases including smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, and yellow fever were among the major killers of Americans. Today, advancements in medicine have controlled or nearly eliminated diseases like these. However, we are left to deal with seemingly more complicated killers, namely cardiovascular disease and cancer. When combined, these two diseases account for roughly 60 percent of the deaths of adults in the United States. In Canada and Australia heart disease and cancer are also very prominent medical problems as in other developed countries.
