Question

Read the following passage and answer the questions.
If asked, ‘What are health decisions?’, most of us would answer in terms of hospitals,
doctors and pills. Yet we are all making a whole range of decisions about our health
which go beyond this limited area; for example, whether or not to smoke, exercise,
wear a seat belt, drive a motorbike, drink alcohol regularly. The way we reach
decisions and form attitudes about our health are only just beginning to be understood.
The main paradox is why people consistently do things which are known to be very
hazardous. Two good examples of this are smoking and not wearing seat belts:
addiction helps keep smokers smoking; and whether to wear a seat belt is only partly
affected by safety considerations. Taken together, both these examples underline
elements of how people reach decisions about their health. Understanding this
process is crucial. We can then more effectively change public attitudes to hazardous,
voluntary activities like smoking.
Smokers run double the risk of contracting heart disease, several times lung cancer, as
compared to non-smokers. Despite extensive press campaigns (especially in the past
20 years), which have regularly told smokers and car drivers the grave risks they are
running, the number of smokers and seat belt wearers has remained much the same.
Although the numbers of deaths from road accidents and smoking are well publicized,
they have aroused little public interest.
If we give smokers the real figures, will it alter their views on the dangers of
smoking? Unfortunately not. Many of the ‘real figures’ are in the form of probabilistic
estimates, and evidence shows that people are very bad at processing and
understanding this kind of information.
The kind of information that tends to be relied on both by the smoker and seat belt
non-wearer is anecdotal, based on personal experiences. All smokers seem to have an
Uncle or an Auntie who has been smoking cigarettes since they were twelve, lived to
90, and died because they fell down the stairs. And if they don’t have such an aunt or
uncle, they are certain to have heard of someone who has. Similarly, many motorists
seem to have heard of people who would have been killed if they had been wearing
seat belts.
Reliance on this kind of evidence and not being able to cope with ‘probabilistic’ data
form the two main foundation stones of people’s assessment of risk. A third is
reliance on press-publicised danger and causes of death.

Answer 1

‘Why do we still dice with death?’ by Robert Hallett in New Society.

Questions & Answers:

• Question 1.
• The subject under discussion in this article is (choose the correct answer)
• i) Why people persist in running health risks.
• ii) Why people fail to make health decisions.
• iii) How people estimate the dangers of smoking.
• iv) How to use the mass media for health education.
• Answer: Option (ii) The subject under discussion in this article is why people fail to make health decisions.

• Question 2.
• What are the two things which are dangerous, but people continue to do them?
• Answer: Though smoking and not wearing seat belts are the two dangerous things, but people continue to do them.

• Question 3.
• Why do you think giving ‘real figures’ to smokers, does not prevent them from smoking?
• Answer: Giving ‘real figures’ to smokers, does not prevent them from smoking because people are very bad at processing and understanding that kind of information.