Re: Croaking Lefties

[Clare Porac]

I have published a number of papers on this issue, including two in Developmental Neuropsychology (1998 and 2000).  I have studied relatively large samples of older left-handers and not only are they alive well into their nineties, but they are as healthy as their right-handed age mates.  I recently presented an update on the evidence supporting the mortality risk/left-handedness hypothesis at the meetings of APS in Toronto.  The supportive evidence is slim and there is no prospective study that supports the notion that left-handers have a shorter life span than right-handers.  Clare Porac

Professor of Psychology
Director, School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College


At 10:33 PM 9/20/01 -0500, Jeff Bartel wrote:

On Thu, 20 Sep 2001 Stephen Black <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Congratulations on your new status as a non-lurker. I'm not aware
> of any association between being ambidextrous and dyslexic, but I
> believe that the incidence of dyslexia is greater in kak-handers
> (ok, left-handers) like myself. The presumed cause would be brain
> dysfunction that is responsible for both conditions. We're also
> supposed to die younger. Sigh!
>
Being a lefty myself, I've always been sensitive to people telling me not only that I'm more prone to addiction of various forms, depression, suicide, not being able to use scissors properly, and the like, but also that I'm going to die earlier because of my sinistrality.

Fortunately, Simon Ellis came to my rescue and let me know that left-handers don't, in fact, die earlier (despite Halpern & Coren's [1991] article in the NEJM to the contrary).  A summary of Ellis' article is available here:

http://www.junkscience.com/news2/leftmort.htm

Here are a couple exerpts from the 1998 AP news release:

> In a nine-year study, Dr. Simon Ellis and his colleagues at Keele
> University in England examined the link between left-handedness and the
> risk of dying earlier using 6,049 people ranging in age from 15 to 70.
>
> "Handedness did not make a significant contribution to the outcome of
> death," concluded the study, published Friday in this week's issue of The
> Lancet, a British medical journal.
>
> The question of whether lefties die younger is controversial. Several
> studies have suggested a connection, but others have shown no link.
>
> One theory suggests that older age groups contain fewer left-handers not
> because they die earlier, but because many in the older generation were
> forced as children to become right-handed, whereas children today are less
> likely to be pressured into switching.

Interested readers may wish to read the (ironically, shorter) article from the source, The Lancet,  Volume 351, Number 9116, 30 May 1998.  (You can read it for free after registering at http://www.thelancet.com).

So, not only can I take comfort in knowing I should live as long as my dextral friends, I can look to all those famous lefties (Michelangelo, Ben Franklin, Einstein, Alexander the Great, Picasso, Stephen Black) and know that I'm just like them.

Jeff

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Jeff Bartel                                   Department of Psychology http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~jbartel          Kansas State University =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 

Reading an email message about a new email virus?  Getting a note that's been forwarded to a dozen other people?  Before you pass it along, drop by http://www.US.datafellows.com/news/hoax/ for a list of recent hoaxes and chain letters. 

</blockquote></x-html>