Should you believe everything you read?
Answer this simple question to find out
Does the news we are presented with every day affect our perception of risks?
At what age is a woman most likely to get breast cancer?
In her forties
In her fifties
In her sixties
In her seventies
Eighty or older
Age doesn’t matter
This question is taken from a 2007 survey of British women by Oxford University researchers. The survey asked at what age a woman is ‘most likely to get breast cancer’: 56.2 per cent said ‘Age doesn’t matter’; 9.3 per cent said the risk was greatest in the forties; 21.3 per cent said it was in the fifties; 6.9 said in the sixties; 1.3 per cent said the risk was highest in the seventies. The correct answer – ‘80 or older’ – was chosen by a minuscule 0.7 per cent.
These results illustrate a distortion in our perception of risks such as breast cancer, part of which can be influenced by the way they are treated by the media.
In 2001, researchers led by Wylie Burke of the University of Washington published an analysis of articles about breast cancer that appeared in major U.S. magazines between 1993 and 1997. Among the women that appeared in these stories, 84 per cent were younger than 50 years old when they were first diagnosed with breast cancer; almost half were under 40. Only 2.3 per cent of the profiles featured women in their sixties and not one article out of 172 profiled a woman in her seventies – even though two-thirds of women diagnosed with breast cancer are 60 or older. In effect, the media turned the reality of breast cancer on its head. Surveys in Australia and the United Kingdom made the same discovery. This is troubling because it has a predictable effect on women’s
perceptions of the risk of breast cancer.
Do we really live in such a frightening time? Should we be so afraid? We are among the healthiest, safest people in history. There’s really never been a better time to be alive. We’re the lucky ones.
*Breast Cancer Care