Cancer Doesn't Take a Holiday

This week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) illustrates how our minds create an association that doesn't exist. In this case, Grandma hung on until Christmas before she died. We remember when people die of cancer on December 26 but not December 24. Young and Hade looked at 1.3 million people who died in Ohio from 1989-2000, 300,000 of whom died of cancer. They found no significant number of cancer deaths the week after compared against a week before birthdays, Thanksgiving, or Christmas.

Link: JAMA -- Abstract: Holidays, Birthdays, and Postponement of Cancer Death, December 22/29, 2004, Young and Hade 292 (24): 3012.