Time to Rethink the Health Benefits of Drinking?
In order to make any kind of coherent public policy, we have to accept certain claims as fact, even when they are only provisionally supported by data. Almost never are these claims purely borne out by the data once it comes in, but often, the claim has become a treasured chestnut as durable as any actual fact. As a consequence, we keep charging forward on bum assumptions.
Owing to a particular mixture of history, religion, and culture, the United States has always had an awkward relationship with alcohol. You recall that dust-up we had in the late teens of the last century, but that was only the most extreme case. The way we think about alcohol sales, alcohol abuse, and alcohol consumption is colored as much by hoary myth and legend as science--abetted by the fact that until the last decade, there wasn't a whole lot of science to refute the myth. But that's changing, and the overwhelming consensus refutes much of what we have believed about alcohol and its affect on society. Time Magazine recounted some of the more surprising recent findings:
Owing to a particular mixture of history, religion, and culture, the United States has always had an awkward relationship with alcohol. You recall that dust-up we had in the late teens of the last century, but that was only the most extreme case. The way we think about alcohol sales, alcohol abuse, and alcohol consumption is colored as much by hoary myth and legend as science--abetted by the fact that until the last decade, there wasn't a whole lot of science to refute the myth. But that's changing, and the overwhelming consensus refutes much of what we have believed about alcohol and its affect on society. Time Magazine recounted some of the more surprising recent findings:
But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren't entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers....
But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who had never been drinkers, second-highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.