Illegitimate use of statistics

I am always amazed and troubled by the use of impossible statistical references by some organizations to make their point. While driving back to the office from a meeting today, I noticed a billboard with this startling "fact":

Every 14 seconds...Another child is orphaned due to AIDS. (Google search identified this site, among others, as a source for this "factoid")

A quick math check [60 seconds in a minute X 60 minutes in an hour X 24 hours in a day = 86,400 seconds in a day] tells you that 6,171 [86,400 / 14] parents are dying each day and leaving behind at least one orphaned child. More math reveals that nearly 2.25 million parents are dying on an annual basis - based on this "factoid".

Wow. Those are seriously troubling numbers. Since this "fact" refers to orphaned children, the "actual" number of deaths caused by HIV/AIDS must be much higher since people without children - and even children themselves - die from this disease as well - right.

When I returned to the office, I quickly checked, to verify these "facts", and found this from the CDC and the National Center for Health Statistics:

"Mortality Number of deaths: 14,095 (2002)
Deaths per 100,000 population: 4.9 (2002)
Source: Deaths: Final Data for 2002"

Wait a minute. That can't be right. The billboard said "Every 14 seconds..." and I did the math. It's over 2 million people. Oh, the numbers on the CDC were only in the US. That explains it. Here in the US we have only 14,095 of the 2 million deaths. The rest of the world has the 2,211,000 incidents of death, caused by HIV/AIDS, to parents (assuming all US deaths were to parents) of at least one child that makes the "fact" true.

My point isn't to diminish the impact of HIV/AIDS. It is a devastating disease that we need to find a cure for. Just like heart disease, cancer, Alzheimers, diabetes, etc. The problem is, when you use completely misleading statistics as facts, you run the risk of alienating a great many people who are offended by message on principle.

You, as the messenger, may think that the ad was a success because it made me do the research and think about the impact of HIV/AIDS. Not entirely true. My quick research showed me that HIV/AIDS isn't even in the top 15 of leading causes of death in the US behind those mentioned above as well as accidents, suicides and homicides. Those are the diseases that will impact my life and those I know based purely on actual statistical facts. That's where my efforts and dollars will be invested first.

The bottom line? Tell people the actual facts. As soon as you over-hype a problem, you lose a portion of your audience. The more you do it and the greater the hype - the less credibility you have. Unfortunately, that has the opposite affect you desire - even when the actual facts are still troubling.