Another one of those “public-private partnerships” is in trouble.
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism is funding a 10-year, 8,000-participant study examining the health effects of moderate drinking. About half are to be assigned the requirement to have one drink a day, every day. The other half are to completely abstain from drinking.
The study will examine which group experiences more health issues, including heart attacks, strokes and deaths.
NIH doesn’t have enough money to do all the studies it wants to do, so it reached out to the bev/al industry to help fund this study. The five biggest bev/al suppliers agreed to pay $66 million through the Foundation for the NIH to help fund the study.
Now, three years into the project A-B is backing out.
In a letter to Maria C. Freire, president/executive director of the foundation, Andrés Peñate, global vice president for regulatory and public policy for AB InBev, said the company agreed to help fund it, because “we believed it would yield valuable, science-based insights into the health effects of moderate drinking.”
He emphasized the company had no role in the design or execution of the research and said “stringent firewalls were put in place” to “safeguard the objectivity and independence of the science.”
“Unfortunately, recent questions raised around the study could undermine its lasting credibility, which is why we have decided to end our funding,” the letter concluded.
Part of the problem with the study’s credibility is that NIH officials and scientists had met directly with alcohol groups to solicit funds and hinted results would favor moderate drinking, according to a report in The New York Times.
Comment: That certainly looks bad. But we suspect it’s a lot of ado over nothing. First, we suspect industry routinely meets with scientists seeking funding for one study or another, whether being done under the imprimatur of a government institute or an individual university or researcher.
As for hinting the results would favor moderate drinking, there are two things to say: First, what provisions were in place to ensure that industry wouldn’t have direct contact with the researchers? Second, we’d be surprised if the result didn’t favor moderate drinking. That is, after all, what most other studies have found.
Also: Why would A-B and other suppliers help fund a government research project? To help insure that it is done to high standards, and to avoid charges that the research was influenced by industry. As you can see, the latter idea doesn’t work. Critics will use anything they can to discredit anything that might be favorable to the bev/al industry.