Measuring the Worth of Schooling and Medical Therapies: How Objective Are The Metrics?
Choosing the right metric to measure a medical therapy or school effectiveness is not a fact-filled, objective decision. It is subjective and packed with trade-offs.
Consider the metrics used since 1971 when President Richard Nixon signed legislation declaring a War on Cancer.*
In 1985 one researcher used the measure of how many lives were saved with chemotherapy and exams that detected the onset of cancer. He used the national cancer registry to determine how many Americans were diagnosed with cancer annually (about one million in 1985) and how many died of cancer in the same year (about 500,000). He then estimated how many cancer patients were “cured” (five years of remission) after heavy doses of chemotherapy alone (about 5,000) a year. He then estimated lives saved annually from chemotherapy given after surgery (35,000 to 40,000). Total: Less than one out of 20 people diagnosed with cancer in a given year and less than one in ten of the total patients who died of cancer had benefited from screening and