A devastating demolition of that Lancet survey that claimed 100,000 Iraqis had been killed since the war started has been made by Andrew Bolt in the Australian Herald Sun. Many others have rubbished this figure, but Bolt marshals a magisterial case. The Lancet researchers, he says, arrived at the 100,000 figure by comparing death rates in Iraq before the invasion, which they put at 5 per 1000 per year, with the death rate after it. He goes on:

'But what evidence we have tells us these pre-war death rates were actually much higher. Dated United Nations figures suggest the overall death rate was well over seven in every 1000 – or close to, if not higher than, the present rate of 7.9 in every 1000 that the Lancet survey suggests. But even more persuasive are 2002 figures from UNICEF, which in a much bigger survey of 24,000 households found the infant mortality rate in Iraq before the war was actually a tragic 108 deaths per 1000 infants.This is more than three times higher than the Lancet survey claims was the case – and double what even the survey claims is the infant mortality rate today. How could the anti-war activists forget? Remember, before the war, anti-American propagandists such as John Pilger denouncing this "genocide" of Iraqi children and blaming it on the United Nations sanctions demanded by those evil Americans?'

Yes, it is indeed amazing how the power of prejudice simply airbrushes out of history every fact that contradicts it, even the last outrage from which such people made such noisy mileage. But journalistic ideologues are one thing. Where, though, does this leave the Lancet, whose claim to objectivity and authority in the medical world now lies in shreds?

Posted by melanie at November 23, 2004