CDC Study Overstated Obesity as Cause of Death
From: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/health/20041123-0553-health-obesity.html
A prominent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may
have overstated the number of obesity-related deaths in 2000 by as much as 20
percent, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
An analysis of the study, which was released in March and predicted that obesity
would surpass tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death, found that
mathematical errors may have inflated the 2000 death toll attributed to obesity
by 80,000, the Journal said. It sourced its report to CDC documents reviewed by
the newspaper.
The CDC's chief of science, Dixie Snider, who is also leading the internal
inquiry of the study, confirmed to the paper that the CDC will reduce the
estimate of the number of deaths attributable to poor diet and lack of exercise,
but he declined to say by how much, the paper said.
The study originally concluded that in 2000 there were nearly as many
obesity-related deaths, at 400,000, as there were deaths related to tobacco use,
at 435,000.
The CDC launched an internal review of the study after researchers criticized
its methodology in letters published in the journal Science. Snider told the
paper the CDC would submit a correction to the Journal of the American Medical
Association, which published the original study.