text_1: Aspirin may cut cancer deaths, but caution urged
text_2: From the appropriate title to the last precautionary sentence, this story provides the readers with a balanced perspective and places the study into context. This story gives readers key facts and a range of expert reactions and context about a study that re-analyzed heart disease prevention experiments and saw lower rates of cancer deaths among trial participants who had been assigned to take daily low-dose aspirin. Readers are clearly told that while this study provides new insight, there are some key questions that need to be answered before many experts would change their recommendations about aspirin. The only important shortcoming is that it reports only the relative risk reductions without also telling readers about the absolute differences in cancer death rates that the researchers observed. Cancers of all types are second only to heart disease as the cause of death in developed countries. A number of observational studies have suggested that the kind of low-dose aspirin regimen recommended for some people at risk of heart disease may also have some cancer-related benefits. This study attempts to avoid some of the inherent limitations of observational studies by using data that was collected as part of experimental trials that randomized people to take aspirin or a placebo pill. It is important that stories explain both the advantages and limitations of this kind of data analysis.