This article was taken from the February 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Mammograms cut your risk of dying from breast cancer by 20 per cent. That's good. But you have a ten per cent chance of being sent on for a biopsy that reveals the scan to be a false positive (ouch)! Or it can lead to unnecessary, unpleasant treatment (ugh). Medical data clearly wants to confuse you -- what if one of those people actually saved by a test (or a preventive drug such as Tamoxifen) turns out to be you?
To help you to get your head around this, a team at Berlin's Harding Center for Risk Literacy is working on representing the risk/benefit trade-offs. "Healthcare providers often focus only on the positives," says Michelle McDowell, a research fellow and leader of the project. "We're helping people weigh the benefits and harms." One good thing about hard data: it can get your blood pressure back to normal.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
