• ’No clear evidence’ for rise in Iraqi birth defects
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/09/2013915141726303111.html

    A more informative way to present this data would have been by district, and by exposure, before and after 2003. In other words, tables could have been constructed for individual districts indicating which districts had high exposure and which ones had low exposure to bombardment or heavy fighting. This presentation would be more likely to show changes over time in individual districts, based on the exposure status of the population. Indeed, some may argue that in a study such as this, even “district” may be too large a unit of analysis to render real effects visible.

    Based on numerous limitations and uncertainties, some of which are indicated in the report itself, the conclusions of this report are overstated. According to the data provided by its unknown authors, they cannot legitimately make any conclusion regarding rates of birth defects in the governorates of Iraq. This amounts to an immense failure of this report in accomplishing what it set out to do: to detect changes in adverse reproductive outcomes before and after exposure to bombardment or heavy fighting in Iraqi population.