Let’s Not Trust the Alcohol Industry to Tell Us Alcohol is Healthy!

While the American public was busy with other matters, the alcoholic beverage industry and certain scientists associated with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conspired to prove that alcohol consumption improves health. The plan, it seems, was to design the study to come up with that exact result, no matter what the facts might actually be. Fortunately for Americans, the plan was canceled once the director of the NIH received a full accounting of how many lines of propriety the researchers had crossed.

It took 165 pages to document the pervasive wrongdoing that would have provided the alcohol industry with fake science to support the idea that moderate consumption of alcohol daily improves one’s health. This report included a litany of lies and improper conduct such as the following:

• Last year, the lead researcher told the New York Times that he had “literally no contact with the alcohol industry.” But the NIH investigation documented conference calls he held with alcohol companies eager to fund the study. Also, the memos he wrote to alcohol companies to respond to their concerns about the outcome of the study.
• As a result of his courting of these alcohol companies, five beer and liquor makers agreed to provide most of the funding for the $100 million study that would take ten years to complete.
• Institute staff conspired to conceal the study’s funding from key NIH staff, including the director, Dr. Francis Collins. One staffer sent an email noting that a senior official who would be present at a meeting related to the study did not know about the funding sources and that it was advisable to “keep it that way.”

• In 2015, the lead researcher and his staff edited an email to an alcohol industry group to make it state that one of the important outcomes of the study was to show that moderate drinking is safe. Of course, this was many years before the study was completed.

It’s important to note that in drug or medical-device studies, any time the study is industry-sponsored, the results are 30% more likely to reach positive conclusions. That’s really not shocking. In this case, alcohol companies coughing up $67 million would expect to get excellent return on that investment.

The Study’s Original Purpose

It appears that the study was specifically designed to bolster old claims that moderate alcohol consumption has beneficial effects, especially on the heart. But a 2014 study from the World Health Organization (WHO) found that there are no safe levels of alcohol consumption. While some limited health metrics might improve slightly, the WHO reported, “the evidence shows that the ideal situation for health is to not drink at all.” Alcohol is a known cause of high blood pressure and several types of cancer and any small improvements do not result in alcohol being a benefit to one’s health.

Overlooking the Cancer Connection

One example of the flaws in this proposed study was that even a ten-year length would not be enough to detect a connection between moderate alcohol consumption and the development of cancer, especially breast cancer. The New York Times report notes that the designers of the study told those reviewing their applications for grant money that the study was only intended to look at benefits and was “not powered to identify negative health effects.” There would, then, be no way of obtaining the full picture of the effects of alcohol.

Cheers!

As an illustration of the inappropriate tone of the entire project, in 2013 the proposed name for this project was the “Cardiovascular Health Effects of Ethanol Research Study.” The resulting acronym would have been “CHEERS.” The name was later modified to “Moderate Alcohol and Cardiovascular Health” or MACH.

This research project was launched in 2013 and wasn’t cancelled for five years. One wonders how it is possible for a group of scientists to give away the health of the public—and for what? Future jobs in the alcohol industry? Payoffs? Recognition among their peers? We will never know. The only thing that matters is that finally, science was served by the cancellation of this study.