US, Britain Deny Visa To Iraqi Doctor
Lafta had been waiting for his US visa to be approved since July 2006. The UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine organized the research into pediatric cancers in Basra, Iraq, with support from the Puget Sound Partners, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative.
According to the State Department, the problem with Lafta's US visa was one of "miscommunication."
The back-up plan, conceived in December was this: Lafta would deliver the speech at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, UW's sister university on the project. The speech would be broadcast to Seattle. Lafta received a Canadian visa within a week of application.
But that plan fell through on Tuesday. Britain would not allow a "transfer visa" -- necessary because Lafta's flight had a four-hour layover at London's Heathrow Airport. Reportedly, Britain denied the visa because Iraq has been on "the terrorist watch list since 1993." However, Lafta reportedly gave lectures in Britain in 2005.
Why the paperwork red tape? Lafta is co-author of controversial research that contends "civilian deaths in the Iraq war far [exceed] officially reported numbers." The British medical journal Lancet published the research in October.
But this trip dealt primarily with pediatric cancer and involved "10 days collaborating with researchers, including [Tim Takaro, an associate professor of health sciences, Simon Fraser], on an investigation into reportedly escalating childhood cancer rates in southern Iraq." Lafta was "bringing much of the data with him in paper form."
Takaro: “It’s the public health impacts of the war that we want people to understand. That’s the message that’s being squelched.”
Amy Hagopian, UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine, told The (UW) Daily that researchers will continue to try to bring Lafta to campus, even though their grant money has been depleted by canceled plane fare. She told the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Dr. Lafta had the data, and we need to talk with him about how it was collected. We can’t write a paper without actually sitting with him and discussing all the context in which the data were collected and analyzing the data together, running the statistical models together.... This has to be a face-to-face process.
From the Lancet published research (subscription required); emphasis added:
The risk of death was estimated to be 2·5-fold higher after the invasion when compared with the preinvasion period. Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1·5-fold. We estimate that 98000 more deaths than expected (8000–194000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included...
The major causes of death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion violence was the primary cause of death... The risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher than in the period before the war...
We have shown that even in extremely difficult circumstances, the collection of valid data is possible, albeit with limited precision. In this case, the lack of precision does not hinder the clear identification of the major public-health problem in Iraq—violence.
Many of the Iraqis reportedly killed by US forces could have been combatants. 28 of 61 killings (46%) attributed to US forces involved men age 15–60 years, 28 (46%) were children younger than 15 years, four (7%) were women, and one was an elderly man. It is not clear if the greater number of male deaths was attributable to legitimate targeting of combatants who may have been disproportionately male, or if this was because men are more often in public and more likely to be exposed to danger...
This survey shows that with modest funds, 4 weeks, and seven Iraqi team members willing to risk their lives, a useful measure of civilian deaths could be obtained. There seems to be little excuse for occupying forces to not be able to provide more precise tallies. In view of the political importance of this conflict, these results should be confirmed by an independent body such as the ICRC, Epicentre, or WHO. In the interim, civility and enlightened self-interest demand a re-evaluation of the consequences of weaponry now used by coalition forces in populated areas...
This survey was funded by the Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Small Arms Survey in Geneva Switzerland.
Dr. Les Roberts -- "the lead investigator in the field" who held primary "[responsibility] for the data analysis, interpretation, and preparation" of the Lancet article -- is employed by the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health in New York. He is the substitute presenter for Lafta.