Madam, - Dermot Meleady (March 1st, 9th and 21st) has consistently attacked the study on Iraqi war deaths by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, published in the Lancet in October 2006.
It may interest him to know that British government experts from the start acknowledged the correctness of the team's study design, its conduct of the survey and analysis of the data.
In a memo dated last October, obtained by the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act, Sir Roy Anderson, chief scientific adviser to Britain's Ministry of Defence, stated that the survey design was "robust" and the methodology constituted "best practice", describing it also as a "tried and trusted" method of measuring deaths in war zones. Further details can be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6495753.stm.
Ministry spokesmen were advised not to publicly criticise the report, though there was no move to take the next logical step and concede the study's estimate of over 600,000 Iraqi war dead.
This revelation casts in a new light the veiled accusations of scientific fraud directed at the Lancet, and (indirectly) at Johns Hopkins University. These were clearly misinformation designed to confuse the public. Prof Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins has firmly responded to all criticisms of the study, most recently in a webcast on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology website.
While it may seem insensitive to argue over estimates of the numbers slain in the Iraq war, it is also important to continue confronting the initiators and perpetrators of this war with the consequences of their actions. - Yours, etc,
TOBY JOYCE, Balreask Manor, Navan, Co Meath.