What we don't know can sure as hell hurt somebody

It's hard to keep up with all the outrages these days, but some of the world's leading public health experts have reminded us of one of the biggest. The U.S. and the U.K., occupying powers in Iraq, have made it clear that they have no interest in counting the civilians who have died as a result of the invasion of Iraq -- not even the ones shot dead or blown up by British and American troops.

Klim McPherson, currently at Oxford University, is first signatory. Writing in the British Medical Journal, he says:

Counting the dead is intrinsic to civilised society. Understanding the causes of death is a core public health responsibility. The government's white paper on public health emphasises the vital role of assessing the impact on health of all public policy. This is well recognised, and yet neither the public nor public health professionals are able to obtain reliable and officially endorsed information about the extent of civilian deaths attributable to the allied invasion of Iraq. Estimates vary between tens and hundreds of thousands. . . .The policy being assessed—the allied invasion of Iraq—was justified largely on grounds of democratic supremacy. Voters in the countries that initiated the war, and others—not least in Iraq itself—are denied a reliable evaluation of a key indicator of the success of that policy. This is unacceptable. Instead the UK government's policy was first not to count at all, and then to rely publicly on extremely limited data available from the Iraqi Ministry of Health. This follows US government policy; famously encapsulated by General Tommy Franks of the US Central Command "We don't do body counts." Its inadequacy was emphasised after the publication of a representative household survey that estimated 100 000 excess deaths since the 2003 invasion. The government rejected this survey and its estimates as unreliable; in part absurdly because statistical extrapolation from samples was thought invalid. Imprecise they are, but to a known extent. These are unique estimates from a dispassionate survey conducted in the most dangerous of epidemiological conditions. Hence the estimates, as far as they can go, are unlikely to be biased, even allowing for the reinstatement of Falluja. To confuse imprecision with bias is unjustified.

The full text of the statement, whose signatories also include Victor Sidel, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, may be found here. I have nothing to add except that this situation tells us all we need to know about the "moral values" of our current leadership.