July 21, 2014

Survival of the fittest? Latest Thomas Lumley Listener column

Thomas Lumley writes in his latest Listener column: “Since 1980, your chance of surviving five years after a heart attack has increased from just over 70% to just under 80%. For breast cancer, the five-year survival rate has gone from about 60% to about 85% in the same period of time, and for melanoma it has risen from about 80% to over 90%.

“From these figures you might conclude that breast cancer treatment has improved a lot, treatment for melanoma has not improved as much and treatment for a heart attack has improved slightly less than for melanoma. It’s actually a bit more complicated than that.”

Read the rest of the column here. 

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Atakohu Middleton is an Auckland journalist with a keen interest in the way the media uses/abuses data. She happens to be married to a statistician. See all posts by Atakohu Middleton »

Comments

  • avatar
    Martin Kealey

    Any chance we could have this article as a web page instead of as a Microsoft file which I’m prompted to download?

    10 years ago

  • avatar
    Julie Middleton

    Hi Martin, I’m afraid I don’t have the offline – the next column will be a scan of the original, hopefully.

    10 years ago