Lancet Surveys Of Iraq War Casualties

''The Lancet'', one of the oldest scientific medical journals in the world, published two peer-reviewed studies on the effect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation on the Iraqi mortality rate. The first was published in 2004; the second (by many of the same authors) in 2006. The studies estimate the number of excess deaths caused by the occupation, both direct (combatants plus non-combatants) and indirect (due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poor healthcare, etc.).

The first survey . By Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham. ''The Lancet'', 29 October 2004. There is a version of the PDF article that has a clickable table of contents. It is here: . published on 29 October 2004, estimated 98,000 excess Iraqi deaths (with a range of 8,000 to 194,000, using a 95% confidence interval (CI)) from the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq to that time, or about 50% higher than the death rate prior to the invasion. The authors described this as a conservative estimate, because it excluded the extreme statistical outlier data from Fallujah. If the Fallujah cluster were included, the mortality estimate would increase to 150% over pre-invasion rates (95% CI: 1.6 to 4.2).

The second survey . By Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts. ''The Lancet'', 11 October 2006 . By Gilbert Burnham, Shannon Doocy, Elizabeth Dzeng, Riyadh Lafta, and Les Roberts. A supplement to the October 2006 Lancet study. It is also found here:

/ref>"Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000"
By David Brown. ''Washington Post.'' 11 October 2006. published on 11 October 2006, estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war, or 2.5% of the population, through the end of June 2006. The new study applied similar methods and involved surveys between 20 May and 10 July 2006. More households were surveyed, allowing for a 95% confidence interval of 392,979 to 942,636 excess Iraqi deaths. 601,027 deaths (range of 426,369 to 793,663 using a 95% confidence interval) were due to violence. 31% (186,318) of those were attributed to the US-led Coalition, 24% (144,246) to others, and 46% (276,472) unknown. The causes of violent deaths were gunshot (56% or 336,575), car bomb (13% or 78,133), other explosion/ordnance (14%), air strike (13% or 78,133), accident (2% or 12,020), and unknown (2%).

The mortality estimates in the ''Lancet'' surveys are higher than in several other reports, including those of the Iraqi Health Ministry and the United Nations, as well as other household surveys such as the Iraq Living Conditions Survey and the Iraq Family Health Survey article reported that before Iraq sanctions were imposed by the UN in 1990, infant mortality had "fallen to 47 per 1,000 live births between 1984 and 1989. This compares to approximately 7 per 1,000 in the UK." The BBC article was reporting from a study of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, titled "Sanctions and childhood mortality in Iraq", that was published in the May 2000 '' Lancet'' medical journal.

The 2000 BBC article reported that after the UN sanctions were imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, "They found that in south and central Iraq, infant mortality had risen to 108 per 1,000 between 1994 and 1999, while child mortality—covering those between one and five years—rocketed from 56 to 131 per 1,000."

The 2000 BBC article also reported, "However, it found that infant and child mortality in the autonomous, mainly Kurd region in the North of the country, has actually fallen, perhaps reflecting the more favourable distribution of aid in that area."

UN-sponsored studies taken after 2003 revealed that the previous childhood mortality figures for South/Central Iraq (supplied by Saddam's government) were inflated by more than a factor of two and that the childhood mortality rate in those regions was even lower than the rate in northern Iraq.

The UN sanctions ended on 22 May 2003 (with certain arms-related exceptions).

40 houses surveyed per day

Madelyn Hicks, a psychiatrist and public health researcher at King's College London in the UK, says she "simply cannot believe" the paper's claim that 40 consecutive houses were surveyed in a single day. "There is simply not enough time in the day," she says, "so I have to conclude that something else is going on for at least some of these interviews." Households may have been "prepared by someone, made ready for rapid reporting," she says, which "raises the issue of bias being introduced."

An 24 October 2006 ''The Guardian'' article reports this response from ''Lancet'' study author Gilbert Burnham:

Others had suggested that it was impossible for 40 households to be surveyed in one day—but in fact the researchers were split into two teams and conducted 20 household interviews each, he said.

An 30 October 2006 BBC
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