Practice News Story - revised

The following is a rewrite of a writing exercise for my Newsgathering class.

Right-handed women are more likely than left-handed women and men of either dominant hand to live into their late 70s, a study recently released in the New England Journal of Medicine indicates.

With an average age at death of 78, right-handed women outlive right-handed men by five years, left-handed women by six years, and left-handed men by 16 years. The average age difference between right- and left-handers is nine years.

Diane Halpern, a psychology professor at California State University at San Bernardino, and Stanley Coren, a researcher from the University of British Columbia, reviewed 987 death certificates from two Southern California counties last year. They found that life expectancy for left-handed individuals is 11 years shorter than that for right-handed individuals.

According to the study, the 10 percent of the U.S. population that is left-handed is six times more likely than right-handed people to die of accidents. Left-handers are also four times more likely to die from injuries while driving.

“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.”

Halpern said researchers have been aware for years that old right-handers out-numbered old left-handers, but believed that was because of the early 20th-century practice of re-training left-handed children to use their right hand as the dominant hand.

“We thought we were looking at old people who used to be left-handed, but we weren’t,” she said. “The truth was, there simply weren’t many left-handers left alive, compared to right-handers.”

Study results should be “interpreted cautiously,” Halpern said. She also warned against using the study results to predict the life span of a single individual because the study does not assess individual fitness.

“It’s important that mothers of left-handed children not be alarmed and not try to change which hand the child uses,” Halpern said. “There are many, many old left-handed people.”


Add a graphic (bar chart) for the following data.

Right-handed people average life expectancy: 75
Left-handed people average life expectancy: 66
Right-handed women average life expectancy: 78
Left-handed women average life expectancy: 72
Right-handed men average life expectancy: 73
Left-handed men average life expectancy: 62