Why You Should Not Concern Yourself with Medical Statistics

You’ve probably heard the saying “there are lies, damn lies and statistics”. I completely agree. When I took statistics classes in college, I thought they were a complete waste of time.

Sometimes they can be helpful when trying to find a trend in a population. They can also be very wrong.

It seems like the healthcare industry loves to pump out statistics of how great they are doing. It’s much different than the manufacturing industry where I used to work.

In health care they like to say things like the “the five-year survival rate for breast cancer in the US has gone from 69% in 1970 to 95% today”.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Imagine if a car manufacturer said “the five-year lifespan of our cars has gone from 69% in 1970 to 95% today”. Meaning in 1970 31% of their new cars didn’t last 5 years. Today only 5% of their cars won’t last 5 years. If you were one of the people who bought a short-lived car, would you be happy? Even if you knew those statistics were improving?

I agree that the human body is a lot more complicated than a car. It’s more the statistics that bother me. Statistics to me are a way for someone to cover up someone’s poor track record.

They particularly hit hard for me during Covid. It seemed like there were all kinds of statistics everyone was following that seemed inaccurate.

Recently I came across this video. It’s pretty eye-opening.

They particularly hit hard for me during Covid. It seemed like there were all kinds of statistics everyone was following that seemed inaccurate.

Recently I came across this video. It’s pretty eye-opening.

Basically it shows that claims like the breast cancer claim above can be manipulated to show much more progress than is actually happening. Earlier detection of health conditions means that someone who was previously categorized as healthy is now put in the ‘cancer patient’ (or some other health condition) group.

Since the person is put in the cancer group earlier, they raise the average lifespan of the cancer group while also raising the average lifespan of the ‘healthy’ group they just left.

And the medical industry takes credit for raising lifespans in both groups. Yet all they did was reclassify everybody.

Medical statistics are really a forecast. Like a weatherman. When I was in the Air Force, my squadron commander would always tell me “don’t cancel the flight based on a forecast”. Go check it out. Try to fly. Just be prepared and have alternate plans in case the bad weather does appear.

I see a parallel for health. For 2026 resolve not to plan your lifestyle based on statistics. Stop thinking that if the breast cancer survival rate is 95% you can feed your body garbage and the hospital has your back.

There is a lot of evidence to suggest many of the chronic conditions such as smallpox and diphtheria improved more due to good nutrition, indoor plumbing and practices such as washing your hands.

Lifestyle changes work. They just aren’t profitable. So nobody throws out statistics to support them. Yet we can see they work. We see huge improvements in health among our assisted living residents.

You probably have friends or family members who improved their health once they resolved to change their lifestyle.

Try to take every statistic with a grain of salt. And resolve for 2026 to make lifestyle changes that you know deep down really work.