On a loosely related note, when I was doing my residency a lot of us picked up the superstition that bad things seem to happen to good people; on the other hand, nasty people seemed to last forever.

Every resident seemed to have a story about a really nice patient with a really nice family who would end up getting diagnosed with some sort of horrible advanced cancer. For each of those stories, there was a some mean, belligerant patient who would get admitted for some problem related to drinking or drugs, get coded, spend a night in the ICU, and then go on to demand narcotics and yell at the nurses another day.

Anecdotal and unscientific, yes. But maybe someone needs to look into whether being nasty helps you live longer!