| | | >> Instead, Schnipper believes three months of added life “is not a large enough benefit to trump the greater benefits to many that would have to be foregone to provide it.”
This is such a fundamentally screwed up metric to begin with. They shouldn't use it at all.
One of the first things you learn in a statistics course is that averages have their place, and in other places they shouldn't be used at all. Unless it can be shown that the standard deviation is nominal, when you're talking about the extension of human lives it simply shouldn't be used.
It is common in cancer treatment, for example, for the oncologist to try a particular drug, wait a little while, then see whether tumor growth has slowed or reversed. If it has, great, if it hasn't, they may move to a different treatment. Because some tumors respond to certain drugs and not others. These simple averages just don't take this into consideration.
Avastin, back when the ACA was being enacted, was an example that kept popping up -- about how it only extended life on average by five months. My cousin's wife has been on Avastin for several years now, having been diagnosed with Stage IV Ovarian, which was thought to be near hopeless at the time. She is now cancer free, at least for the time being. What about the five month average? Useless, if you're her. |
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