New Lancet Study: 425,000 – 790,000 Excess Iraqi Deaths Since We Invaded

Posted on October 11, 2006 by Ampersand

UPDATE: The Lancet Study can be downloaded here (pdf link). A companion paper, which provides some additional details, can be downloaded here (pdf link).

A new study, due to be published on The Lancet’s website today, has found that there have been 655,000 “excess” Iraqi deaths since the US invaded, compared to how many would have died if previous death rates had continued. The confidence interval is from 426,369 to 793,663 deaths. From the Washington Post:

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq’s mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

Of the total 655,000 estimated “excess deaths,” 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country. […]

The same group in 2004 published an estimate of roughly 100,000 deaths in the first 18 months after the invasion. That figure was much higher than expected, and was controversial. The new study estimates that about 500,000 more Iraqis, both civilian and military, have died since then — a finding likely to be equally controversial.[…]

While acknowledging that the estimate is large, the researchers believe it is sound for numerous reasons. The recent survey got the same estimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as the early survey, which gives the researchers confidence in the methods.[..]

They visited 1,849 randomly selected households that had an average of seven members each. One person in each household was asked about deaths in the 14 months before the invasion and in the period after.

The interviewers asked for death certificates 87 percent of the time; when they did, more than 90 percent of households produced certificates.

According to the survey results, Iraq’s mortality rate in the year before the invasion was 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people; in the post-invasion period it was 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people per year. The difference between these rates was used to calculate “excess deaths.”[…]

Gunshot wounds caused 56 percent of violent deaths, with car bombs and other explosions causing 14 percent, according to the survey results. Of the violent deaths that occurred after the invasion, 31 percent were caused by coalition forces or airstrikes, the respondents said.

As I argued last year, the earlier survey is “controversial” only in the sense that global warming and evolution are “controversial.” The dispute over the earlier study was not a genuine dispute about survey technique; it was more of a dispute between reality and right-wing ideology.

Like the earlier study, this study found that the large majority of Iraqis killed have been male:

Of the 629 deaths reported, 87 percent occurred after the invasion. A little more than 75 percent of the dead were men, with a greater male preponderance after the invasion. For violent post-invasion deaths, the male-to-female ratio was 10-to-1, with most victims between 15 and 44 years old.

Curtsy: Deltoid.

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

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9 Responses to New Lancet Study: 425,000 – 790,000 Excess Iraqi Deaths Since We Invaded

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  6. 6
    mateo luiz says:
    October 11, 2006 at 10:02 pm

    if you calculate the birth rate from the single birth stat in the Lancet paper, you will find that their sample was about 20 births/1000/year.
    This is 33% less than the 32 births/1000/year that can be validated through more precise records.
    If the data does not accurately reflect birth statistics, then the sample can not be taken to be representative of the population.

  7. 7
    Charles says:
    October 12, 2006 at 12:19 am

    Mateo,

    I believe that you are probably comparing a rate calculated by dividing births by total female population to a rate that is births divided by female population between 16 and 40 years of age. That the rough calculation you derived from the study numbers (number of births in study divided by number of female members of households, including children and elderly) is off by 33% would be consistent with this difference.

    Also, the chance that the study authors didn’t notice the anomaly you report or didn’t consider it worth trying to explain or account for seems very small. The chance that the peer reviewers for this paper didn’t notice it or ask for an explanation seems even smaller.

  8. 8
    Frank says:
    October 17, 2006 at 11:50 pm

    have you seen the response from Iraq Body Count.com”
    They don’t seem to think much of the lancet/JH report

    IBC.com

    Iraq Body Count Press Release 16 October 2006
    Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates
    Hamit Dardagan, John Sloboda, and Josh Dougherty
    Summary

    A new study has been released by the Lancet medical journal estimating over 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq. The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:

    1. On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;
    2. Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;
    3. Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;
    4. Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;
    5. The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive “Shock and Awe” invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.

    If these assertions are true, they further imply:

    * incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;
    * bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;
    * the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;
    * an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.

    In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.

  9. 9
    Charles says:
    October 18, 2006 at 2:47 am

    Which is to say, the IBC is puzzled by the Great Wall of China. There can’t be that many bricks, there just can’t. Other than biased and ridiculing language, there is nothing about the implied (supposedly extreme and improbable) results that seems that unlikely:

    A government in the middle of a bloody and multi-sided civil war can’t keep good records of the dead.

    Or of the wounded.

    Many wounded don’t risk the hospitals.

    A media that has suffered an extraordinary casualty rates of its own can’t cover the war or its casualties effectively.

    Targeted attacks having driven out almost all foreign service organization, no one is responding to the crisis.

    The IBC and other organizations try to downplay reports that the situation is worse than they think.

    Again, which part of this is unimaginable?