Write a story based on the following information. Your story should be between 5
Write a story based on the following information. Your story should be between 500-750 words and include a headline, a lead, quotes. It should be organized in the inverted pyramid style.
Who/what: A study comparing the death and accident rates of left- and right-handed people.
When: Study was conducted last year and was reported in today’s edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Where: Study was conducted by Diane Halpern, a psychology professor at California State University at San Bernardino, and Stanley Coren, a researcher at the University of British Columbia.
Why: To determine why fewer left-handed people are among the elderly population.
How: Researchers studied death certificates of 987 people in two Southern California counties. Relatives were queried by mail about the subjects’ dominant hands.
The researchers found that the average age at death for right-handed people was 75 and for left-handed people, 66; left-handed people represent 10% of the U.S. population; right-handed females tend to live 6 years longer than left-handed females, and right-handed males live 11 years longer than left-handed males; left handed people were four times more likely to die from injuries while driving than right-handers and six times more likely to die from accidents of all kinds.
Halpern said, “The results are striking in their magnitude.” Halpern is right-handed.
She said her study should be interpreted cautiously. “It should not, of course, be used to predict the life span of any one individual. It does not take into account the fitness of any individual.”
Left handed women die around age 72; right-handed women die around age 78. Left-handed men die around age 62; right-handed men die around age 73.
“Some of my best friends are left-handed,” Halpern said. “It’s important that mothers of left-handed children not be alarmed and not try to change which hand a child uses,” she said. “There are many, many old left-handed people. We knew for years that there weren’t as many old left-handers,” Halpern said.
“Researchers thought that was because in the early years of the century, most people born left-handed were forced to change to their right hands. So we thought we were looking at old people who used to be left-handed, but we weren’t. The truth was that there simply weren’t many left-handers left alive, compared to right-handers.”
“Almost all engineering is geared to the right hand and right foot,” Halpern said. “There are many more car and other accidents among left-handers because of their environment.”
