blomborg8

Some lies by Bjorn Lomborg about WHO estimates for yearly tuberculosis deaths

This page was created by me, Jeff Opal on 14-FEB-2004, and was last updated 14-FEB-2004

On page 22 of the English edition of The Skeptical Environmentalist Lomborg says:

When looking at trends, Pimentel happily uses very short-term descriptions. He looks at the biggest infectious disease killer, tuberculosis, claiming it has gone from killing 2.5 million in 1990 to 3 million in 1995, and citing an expected 3.5 million dead in 2000.168 However, in 1999, the actual death toll from tuberculosis was 1.699 million, and the WHO source that Pimentel most often uses estimates an almost stable 2 million dead over the 1990s.169

   Here Lomborg misled readers in several ways. Lomborg's obvious intent is to make Pimentel's "claims" (actually: estimates cited from another source) appear like they contractict authoritative numbers from a respected source: the World Health Organization.
    Lomborg fails to inform readers of some very important things:

(1) Pimentel's numbers weren't claims from himself, they were estimates that he merely cited. (See the Pimentel words I've quoted below.)
(2) Pimentel's three estimates were from the same source Lomborg cites: WHO.
(3) Pimentel's numbers and Lomborg's numbers are two very different types of estimates for yearly tuberculosis deaths: Lomborg's number is for confirmed cases, whereas Pimentel's three numbers are for total cases (both confirmed and unconfirmed).
(4) Because tuberculosis is concentrated in areas of the world where people are poorest, it is concentrated where people are least likely to bring an illness to the attention of medical personell who can confirm for WHO that they died from tuberculosis.

    Incidentally, this particular set of lies by Lomborg upset me greatly when I first read them, because I "fell for it". I mistakenly believed Lomborg after I checked his source for the 1.699 million/year claim (a WHO global mortality table downloadable from www.who.int ).   Since I've been telling people for at least 10 years that "around 3 million people die from tuberculosis each year" I concluded that I should attempt to correct this "mistaken estimate", and include and apology, to around thirty people who I've told this over the past 10 years.
    It wasn't until I read some writings by Lomborg-critic Kare Fog that I discovered how Lomborg had deceived me.
    Lomborg's statement:

the actual death toll from tuberculosis was 1.699 million

is a lie. Lomborg surely knew that his cited estimate was one guarranteed to be far smaller than Pimentel's cited estimate, and that Pimentel's was an estimate for all cases, not just confirmed cases.
Why am I so sure about Lomborg's intent to deceive his readers? Simply because Lomborg did some extraordinary things to hide where Pimentel's number came from. Lomborg simultaneously,

(1) used wording in the main text that falsely states that Pimentel's numbers (the first two estimates) came from Pimentel himself (implying that the third of the three numbers also came from Pimentel or from another source of similar reliability),
(2) he failed to reveal in either the main text or the note at the back of the book that Pimentel's source was WHO documents,
(3) used wording in the main text stating that Pimentel's numbers were "claims", not estimates,
(4) intentionally (apparently) included false web addresses for WHO pages.

Lomborg surely deduced that if he let readers know that Pimentel's source was also WHO, readers would become very suspicious, wondering how the same organization could be publicizing wildly divergent numbers Lomborg claimed contradict each other, and would look for an explanation.
In the back of the book Lomborg's notes for 168 and 169 appear on page 357 like this:

168. Pimentel et al. 1998:822-3.
169. WHO 2000b:164; Murray and Lopez 1996c:465,648.

Lomborg's three corresponding bibliography entries (on pages 485, 501, and 479 respectively) appear like this:

Pimentel, David, Maria Tort, Linda D'Anna, Anne Krawic, Joshua Berger, Jessica Rossman, Fridah Mugo, Nancy Doon, Michael Shriberg, Erica Howard, Susan Lee and Jonathan Talbot 1998 "Ecology of increasing disease: population growth and environmental degradation." Bioscience 48(10):817-26.

(indented, in the section of entries labeled as for WHO...)
2000b The World Health Report 2000 Health Systems: Improving Performance. Geneva: World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/whr/2000/index.htm.

(indented, in the section of entries labeled as for Murray, Christopher J.L. and Alan D. Lopez...)
(eds.) 1996c The Global Burden of Disease: A Comprehensive Assessment of Morality and Disability from Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors in 1990 and projected to 2020. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Published by Harvard School of Public Health on behalf of the World Health Organization and the World Bank. Summary at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ organizations/bdu/summary.html (summary).

When one examines Pimentel's paper, however, one finds on pages 822-823 (the words happen to cross over two pages) how he "claimed" his higher numbers for tuberculosis deaths. As the opening paragraph of a paper-section titled "Re-emerging diseases" the paper says:

The spread on new strains of E. coli is due in part to the rapidly expanding human population, especially in areas where humans are crowded and where water and food contamination are rampant (Table 2; Iseki 1994, Daily and Ehrlich 1996, Grady 1996.)
The worldwide increase in TB also results from population crowding and drug resistance (WHO 1996f). Currently, an estimated 1.7 billion people worldwide are infected with TB, with approximately 95% of TB deaths occurring in developing countries. In 1990, the number of new TB infections was 7.5 million; by 1995 new infections numbered 8.9 million; and by 2000, a total of 10.2 million new cases are expected (Lederberg et al. 1992, WHO 1996f). TB deaths per year have been estimated at 2.5 million in 1990 and 3.0 million in 1995 and are projected to rise to 3.5 million by 2000 (WHO 1996f). At present, TB kills more people each year than any other infectious disease in the world (WHO 1996f).

As is obvious, Pimentel's paper clearly states that the three numbers Lomborg showed his readers were estimates, and from WHO. The critically important reference Lomborg hid from his readers reads like this on page 826 in the bibliography of Pimentel's paper:

(indented under the set of 18 bibliography entries for WHO...)
_____. 1996f. World Health Report 1996. Geneva: World Health Organization.