Chance and longevity. From Robin Holliday

Abstract

It has come to our attention that Fig. 1 in the article by David E. Smith in the December issue of BioEssays (The tails of survival curves; BioEssays 16, 907-91 1, 1994) is an idealized figure and does not rest on 'actual data' as represented in the figure itself. Needless to say, idealized representations of data should always be clearly and unambiguously labelled as such. The following two letters deal with the phenomenon of 'longevity outliers' described in the article. The first is a comment by Robin Holliday; the second is from David Smith. Ed. From Robin HollidaySir, David W. E. Smith, in his article entitled The tails of survival curves (BioEssays 16,907-91 1,1994), proposes that

Learning together to work together

“…For myself, and many others, the most powerful session of the three days was delivered on the fi rst morning by Regina Holliday, an artist and carer. 3 Regina performed her story: a story of her interactions with the health service through the diagnosis, illness and death of her husband. Although her husband ' s diagnosis and deterioration from renal cancer had taken place in the USA, the themes of poor communication and lack of compassion are common in all health services, globally.…”