Those aren't good reasons to reject an article. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines? Note that they include: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." Also: "Don't be snarky."
Older articles and historical material are always welcome on HN, if they're interesting. Often they're more interesting than the latest $thing about $current-hot-topic.
As for which credentials professors do or don't have, that seems irrelevant to whether or not the article can be the basis for a substantive, interesting discussion, which is what we care about here.
The main reason to consider this article offtopic for HN would be that it's on a classic flamewar topic. However, those aren't automatically bad. It depends, again, whether the article contains enough interesting information be different (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), and can sustain an interesting discussion. After skimming it a bit, I think it probably clears that bar.
I've changed the title from the original, though (because it's provocative and therefore flamebaity) to a representative sentence from the article body, which says what the article is about.
Of course it's still up to HN users to focus on the interesting parts and discuss them thoughtfully, rather than use it as a diving board to spring into pits of hellfire from.
14 years old article is a good reason to take note of it as it shows it is not just some fad but important long-term issue.
I don't think the issue itself is controversial. I was taught at university that our life expectancy is determined roughly speaking one third by our genes, one third by our lifestyle and one third by healthcare.
And then it became apparent that most healthcare interventions (childhood vaccinations, antibiotics, most medicines) that have a big effect are relatively cheap. The most costly interventions have the least effect. We could easily cut the health budget in half with only a marginal decrease of actual outcomes. But it would be very hard to do due to politics, the structure of incentives etc. But we really need to critically examine and educate people that expecting more and more from healthcare despite progress in this field can only lead to diminishing results.
We cannot change our genes (yet) but we need to think more about our lifestyle (obesity, drug and alcohol use) which could provide considerable potential as well.
I generally agree but public sanitation measures including water purification, food inspection, garbage disposal, and sewers also have a huge impact on average life expectancy. Maybe even more than healthcare.
In other words, vaccines are wonderful but if I had to pick between vaccines and clean water I'd take clean water every time.
