For some reason, I’ve been thinking about how much life has changed over the years. For example, when I was a kid, there were no seat belts in a car. You could sit, lay, kneel, do whatever you wanted in the backseat. You could even climb up onto the ledge of the back window, if that was your thing. Nobody cared. Granted, seat belts made things safer, but we survived without them back then. Nowadays, kids by law must be in a car seat until they’re as tall as I was when I graduated from high school.
We didn’t have air conditioning in our car. We rolled down the windows…..manually….with a crank. We breathed fresh air because smog hadn’t yet been invented.
I remember my brother bought a brand spanking new 1965 Pontiac Grand Prix. It was top of the line and loaded with all the luxuries (including air conditioning). It cost $4600. I know, in today’s dollars that $4600 would be inflated to $48,221, but you can’t purchase a luxury vehicle for that today. In fact, you can’t even buy a Pontiac. They have gone the way of the Edsel.
What changed? As more and more safety features became available, they became mandated. Today, you not only must have seat belts, but you must also have air bags. Do you have any idea what airbags cost? They tack on an additional $3000-$5000 to the price of a vehicle. Don’t get me wrong, there were also plenty of improvements made toward comfort as well, but bear with me as I focus only on the safety features because they’re much easier to quantify.
In 1965, there were 195 million people in the U.S. and around 48,000 lives were lost due to car accidents. In 2025, there were 342 million people in the U.S. and around 36,640 lives were lost due to car accidents. That’s a pretty good indicator that all the safety features installed in cars worked.
Guess how many people had been diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis in 1965. It’s estimated to be between 9700 and 10,000 people. Any idea how many had been diagnosed with MG in 2025? The answer is between 75,000 and 100,000 people. To put that into percentages, in 1965, 0.005% of the U.S. population had been diagnosed with MG. By 2025, 0.029% of the population had been diagnosed with MG. That’s a pretty significant increase.
Does that mean Myasthenia Gravis is becoming more prevalent? Not necessarily. Diagnosis of MG back in 1965 was much more difficult, so there’s a good chance a lot more people had it but had never been diagnosed. With all the knowledge and testing available today, a lot more people are being tested for MG and properly diagnosed. Chances are, in the future, as diagnostics continue to improve, those percentages may even go higher.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It’s actually a double-edged sword. From one perspective, we don’t want more people having to suffer with MG. From another perspective, with improved detection techniques, perhaps more people who already have MG, but aren’t aware they have it, will get the proper treatment they need.
There’s one more plus in this equation and that is the perception of Myasthenia Gravis as a “rare” disease. It’s considered rare because only a very small portion of the population has been diagnosed with it. As more people are properly diagnosed and it becomes more well known, perhaps more money will be spent on research to find a cure. In other words, just like in safety features on cars, there’s a price to pay, but maybe the increased price will be worth it.
By the way, while numerous improvements in safety and technology have been made to cars since 1965, the price of that car outpaced annual wage increases. In 1965, the median average annual salary was $6900. In 2025, it was $63,180. As Sheldon Cooper would say, “Let’s do the math:”
Car Price Increase
$4600 (1965) compared to $48,221 (2025) = 10.48 times increase
Median Annual Salary Increase
$6900 (1965) compared to $63,180 (2025) = 9.16 times increase
Let’s just hope the cost of medical improvements and research don’t outpace our ability to pay for them.
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