Something else I found mildly amusing was the brouhaha over the Surgeon-General’s remarks on alcohol consumption. Sarah D. Wire reports at USA Today:
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s new Advisory on Alcohol and Cancer Risk outlining a direct link between drinking alcohol and increased risk of developing seven types of cancer was released Friday amid a review of federal guidelines for alcohol consumption.
The move drew praise from Dr. Michael B. Siegel, professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, who said it is likely not a coincidence Murthy’s advisory came as the fight over how much alcohol the U.S. should deem safe as part of a healthy diet is being debated.
The secretaries of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are conducting an every-five-year review of dietary guidelines, including for alcohol consumption, which is due to be released later this year. With just over two weeks left before the Biden administration ends, this could be one of Murthy’s last chances to influence the outcome. Murthy didn’t directly call for changing the dietary guidelines in his advisory, however.
“My sense is that he probably got fed up, and he basically has had enough of the alcohol industry influence, and is basically just saying, that’s it. We’re gonna have science decide this, not politics. So he came out with this definitive statement, unequivocally saying that alcohol is a carcinogen and that moderate drinking is a risk factor for cancer,” Siegel said.
The dietary guidelines provide advice on what Americans should eat and drink to meet nutrition needs, promote health, and prevent disease. They are used by doctors to suggest lifestyle changes and by the federal government to determine how food assistance can be spent.
That was followed by a call to place warning labels on all alcoholic beverage containers, something the industry, obviously enough, vehemently opposes.
Why amusing? Anyone who’s read How to Lie with Statistics should have the same reaction. I’d be willing to wager that the same logic as is being used about alcoholic beverages could be applied to placing warning labels on the offices of every physician in the country. I would be willing to wager that the morbidity and mortality due to medical error exceeds that due to light alcohol consumption by a significant margin. I am agnostic on the risks of moderate alcohol consumption.
Furthermore, I would claim that an effective ban on all food and drink would reduce morbidity and mortality to zero. We’d all die of thirst and/or starvation.
You’re right on target, I’d like to add that I’ve felt for a long while now that alcohol is severely undertaxed, it’s a luxury item that no amount of tax would reduce the consumption of.
The downside of the warning labels is that alcohol becomes, as tobacco has, the target for an army of lawyers who will pocket the revenue government could have easily realized.
How history rhymes.
Wasn’t it a 100 years ago when the country was in the midst of prohibition? But warning labels affecting consumption one bit, since an increased risk of cancer is likely a smaller harm of alcohol than the risk of alcoholism.
Although it was Republicans who led the prohibition movement then, and it is a Democrat administration that wants to highlight the risks of alcohol consumption.
It used to be thought that small amounts of alcohol improved health but that is not believed anymore. Small/moderate amounts probably have no benefits or small negative effects. So in terms of relative risk it’s a higher risk. In terms of absolute risk it’s pretty tiny. If you are a min-maxer you should stop drinking. If you are normal you shouldn’t worry about it too much. The cumulative risk wont catch up with you until you are about 200 years old.
Steve
That’s basically my view.