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Wednesday, April 11. 2018

Statistics


One might think that there is an epidemic of Alzheimer's deaths, and those who seek funding for Alzheimer's will tell you so.  The reality is that the rising deaths from Alzheimer's is a measure of medical success in dealing with the other ailments which have tended to kill people sooner than Alzheimer's.


We'll all die from something. Eventually something gives out, even the brain. Carpe diem, and try not to have a family history of Alzheimer's.


Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss in Medical at 15:26 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

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Beware those statistics that show percentages without the raw numbers. I'd bet 14% of heart disease deaths is greater than 71% of Alzheimer's deaths in sheer numbers, so you might think that many fewer people dying of heart disease would be the good news in that chart.

Of course, there's also the rising cost of medical care. As I frequently point out, when my mother had a heart attack 40 years ago, her treatment cost about $3500 whereas when my brother had a heart attack a few years ago it cost him over $150,000. The difference is my brother got a triple bypass operation and my mother got a box and a hole in the ground. It's a little misleading to compare the cost of healthcare then and now without taking into consideration things like not being dead quite so much.
#1 Jerryskids on 2018-04-11 21:36 (Reply)
The data that would more easily verify (or refute) the author’s hypothesis is the “average age at death” for deaths classified by the causes in the chart. Not sure if that’s available anywhere.
#2 Kevin in WI on 2018-04-12 00:34 (Reply)
It is important to know the agenda of the author. Statistics alone is malleable enough to distort the truth. But add in the differences between what and how data was collected years ago with today's methodologies and you can easily discover wonderful or terrible things simply because reported data changed while actual data did not. Then there is the problem of data dredging; searching statistical data for anomalies and discarding anything that does not support your agenda while trumpeting that which does support your agenda. Charts and stories like this may be useful but more often they are simply someones effort to further their own agenda at the expense of accuracy.
#3 OneGuy on 2018-04-12 09:15 (Reply)

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