Refer to Exercise 11.89 and determine and interpret a 98% confidence interval for the difference between the rates of major birth defects for babies born to women who have taken folic acid and those born to women who have not.
In exercise
A. Czeizel and I. Dudas of the National Institute of Hygiene in Budapest directed a study that provided the strongest evidence to date. Their results were published in the paper “Prevention of the First Occurrence of Neural-Tube Defects by Periconceptional Vitamin Supplementation” (New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 327(26), p. 1832). For the study, the doctors enrolled women prior to conception and divided them randomly into two groups. One group, consisting of 2701 women, took daily multivitamins containing 0.8 mg of folic acid; the other group, consisting of 2052 women, received only trace elements. Major birth defects occurred in 35 cases when the women took folic acid and in 47 cases when the women did not.