First do no harm...

In mid-December 2006, two of the authors of the Johns Hopkins/Lancet studies, Doctors Les Roberts and Gil Burnham, gave a briefing on their work to a bipartisan Congressional hearing on civilian casualties in Iraq, convened by Congressmen Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) and Ron Paul (R-TX).

See here for a transcript of the confronting material laid before the US people’s representatives.

It’s a longish document, but worth a read. Roberts and Burnham make a good fist of explaining the methodology and limitations of the study in everyday language. Les Roberts also makes some interesting remarks about how their results more accurately reflect reality than do other sources.

Roberts and Burnham also note that the cluster survey model is increasingly commonly used by the UN, USA and others, to measure mortality and other health issues in situations of conflict and other settings, where more conventional or direct measurement has been rendered impossible. Roberts cites Kosovo and Darfur as theatres where the method has been successfully employed. It emerges also that USAID has accepted the method as a reliable tool for measuring health effects in conflict zones.

And I quite liked these closing remarks from Congressman Ron Paul (a Republican from Texas, no less):

I’d like to thank my colleague and friend, Representative Dennis Kucinich, and his staff for their hard work in organizing this important oversight hearing, and I appreciate the opportunity to have sponsored this event along with Representative Kucinich.

As a medical doctor, I’ve spent a good part of my professional life trying to reduce pain and suffering. It is something I feel very strongly about. Various reports, including the very important Lancet study, suggest that the level of pain, and suffering, and worse, among the non-combatant population in Iraq is on a scale almost unimaginable.

While the administration has shown little interest in the extent of civilian deaths in Iraq, it is important that we in Congress treat this matter with the seriousness it deserves.

We need to have a better understanding of the unintended consequences of this war, not the least in the hope that in the future, Congress will take its constitutional responsibilities regarding war and declaration of war more seriously.

It is also clear we have failed to consider carefully enough our own dead and wounded in this Iraq war. Recent reports suggest that some 100,000 U.S. soldiers have been permanently disabled fighting in Iraq. We need to think of their terrible pain and suffering, and that of their families.

This pain and suffering will not end when this terrible war finally ends, it will continue for the rest of their lives. This is the tragedy of the unnecessary war — both sides suffer needlessly.

I hope this hearing, and others that hopefully will follow, mark the beginning of congressional oversight of this misguided war in Iraq that has sorely been lacking in the three-and-a-half years since the war started.