Cardiology: One Man’s Stress . . .

Is it safe to be a boss? Are executives more subject than their subordinates to early and fatal heart attacks? Medical men, bemused by the number of young executives who made the obituary columns, used to think the danger was real. Then they realized that ditchdiggers seldom make the obit pages, and they decided to take a more careful statistical look at executives to see how the bosses fared. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., with battalions of executives and divisions of manual workers, was an ideal place for the study.

Now, in the A.M.A. Journal, Du Pont Statistician Sidney Pell and Physician C. Anthony D’Alonzo report that presidents, vice presidents and plant managers have an annual heart-attack rate of only 2.2 per 1,000while the manual workers’ rate is 3.2 Du Pont’s clerical workershave a rate of 4.0 per 1,000. Among those listed as clerical workers, evidently, are many who have failed of promotion to executive status and are suffering the stress of frustration.

The tensions of responsibility do not necessarily shorten a man’s life, the researchers conclude. “Stress cannot be measured or described by the external circumstances with which a man must contend, but rather by his reaction to these circumstances. One man’s stress may be another man’s pleasure.”