Michael Fumento on Gulf War Birth Defects Study
Michael Fumento wrote an an essay nicely puncturing the hype surrounding a study of birth defect rates in Gulf War veteran. As Fumento notes, press coverage of the study has trumpeted the study as finding that “Birth Defects High in Children of 1991 War Veterans” as the Baltimore Sun put it.
In fact, the study found that the rate of birth defects among children of Gulf War veterans was lower than for the general population. What it did find were a few specific birth defects where the children in its study had a higher incidence. But should this be cause for alarm?
The study looked at 5,000 children born to Gulf war vets. It examined the incidence rates for 48 birth defects born to male and female veterans of the Persian Gulf war.
As Fumento points out, even with a 95 percent confidence interval for the study, purely by chance we would expect there to be at least two specific birth defects categories that have higher incidence than the general population. And what do you know, for children of male veterans, the study found precisely two birth defects — an increased incidence in two types of heart valve defect.
Additionally, Fumento writes,
The researchers did only assign risk ratings to 26 different categories, which is still enough to make two excesses unexceptional. But why only 26 categories? Because in the others there was not a single defect in the Gulf vets’ children.
Similarly, for children of female veterans of the Gulf War, the study found a higher incidence of one birth defect — a genital urinary tract defect — out of the 48 categories examined. As Fumento writes, “And again, for most categories there were no risk ratings because there were no birth defects.”
Fumento is quick to point out that the researchers conducting the study accurately reported their results, but the news media chose to cherry pick the data and only report on the handful of birth defects where the incidence was higher. Fumento also points to a larger study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that looked at 34,000 infants born to Gulf War veterans and found no evidence for an increase risk in birth defects.
Source:
Media Blow Gulf Vet Birth Defect Study. Michael Fumento, Scripps Howard, June 12, 2003.
Tags: Gulf War Syndrome