I had finished putting out the Daily Thursday night and settled into my easy chair to spend an hour watching various nightly newscasts on tape. My tranquility was disrupted when both NBC Nightly News and the CBS Evening News proclaimed a new scientific study had concluded “there is no safe level of drinking alcohol.”
That, of course, runs counter to a whole raft of studies that finds people who consume alcohol moderately are less likely to die of cardiovascular disease – the No. 1 killer, by a wide margin, of Americans — than either abstainers or heavy drinkers. And moderate drinkers are probably protected against type 2 diabetes and gallstones.
To be sure, it’s long been known that heavy drinking can damage the liver and heart, harm an unborn child, increase the risk of developing breast and some other cancers, contribute to depression and violence and interfere with relationships.
What made this study different was its conclusion that “alcohol use, regardless of amount, leads to health loss across populations.” It goes on to explain that “although we found some protective effects for ischemic heart disease and diabetes among women, these effects were offset” by monotonic associations with “cancer, injuries and communicable disease.”
Communicable disease? We thought that made some sense when considering sexually transmitted diseases. But a chart in the study, published in The Lancet, the British medical journal which published the study, focused on tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis? The bacteria that cause tuberculosis are spread from one person to another through tiny droplets released into the air via coughs and sneezes, according to the Mayo Clinic. Does that mean coughs and sneezes are caused by alcohol? We think that’s a bit of a stretch.
What’s not a stretch is the fact that the number of cases of tuberculosis has increased dramatically because of the spread of HIV, the virus the causes AIDS.
To be sure, IV drug use or alcohol abuse weakens the immune system, making one more susceptible to tuberculosis.
But it’s not just alcohol abuse that weaken the immune system: Diabetes, severe kidney disease, certain cancers, cancer treatment, drugs to prevent rejection of transplanted organs, and some drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and psoriasis also can weaken the immune system, possibly leading to tuberculosis.
In publishing the study, The Lancet describes it as “the most comprehensive estimate of the global burden of alcohol use to date.”
Given the study’s conclusion that “the widely held view of the health benefits of alcohol needs revising . . . our results show the safest level of drinking is none,” you can expect anti-alcohol advocates to seize on recommendations in an accompanying editorial which concludes:
“The most effective and cost-effective means to reduce alcohol-related harms are to reduce affordability through taxation or price regulation, including setting a minimum price per unit (MUP), closely followed by marketing regulation, and restrictions on the physical availability of alcohol.”
Those also are the most effective measures, the editorial says, “for curbing tobacco-related harms . . . with an increasing body of evidence showing that controlling obesity will require the same measures.
“These diseases of unhealthy behaviors, facilitated by unhealthy environments and fueled by commercial interests putting shareholder value ahead of tragic human consequences, are the dominant health issue of the 20th Century,” it adds.