
Mounting criticism of NIH's relationship with the alcohol industry - lisper
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/04/i-dont-f-ing-care-in-wooing-67m-from-big-alcohol-nih-nixed-critical-study/
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whiddershins
As far as I can tell the harmful effects of alcohol are both grossly
underestimated and severely overestimated. It’s the strangest contradiction.

I think as an addictive and potentially life destroying substance that
promotes bad behavior our culture has a blind spot, or a kind of denial.

However the research suggesting that alcohol also decreases all cause
mortality relative to abstinence, even when consumed heavily, seems pretty
strong and not influenced by the factors referred to in this article. The link
between alcohol intake and lower obesity also defies intuition.

The research is also hampered by the premise that it’s unethical to do a
intervention study that has heavy alcohol use as one of the groups.

The whole thing seems like a misuse of research, to me. The effects of
alcohol, both positive and negative, are mostly apparent to anyone who looks
around.

Edit:spelling

~~~
mikenew
Minor point, but Dr. Jason Fung has a very interesting and, in my opinion,
compelling explanation of obesity and weight gain. He argues that the main
driver of obesity in the long term is insulin rather than total calories, and
because alcohol doesn't significanlty raise insulin it doesn't contribute to
obesity, despite the calories.

[https://youtu.be/YpllomiDMX0](https://youtu.be/YpllomiDMX0)

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dcmininni
Alcohol itself may not raise insulin but what about the rest of your hard
apple cider or miller lite?

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mikenew
Miller Lite has about 12 calories from carbohydrates, so not much. Roughly the
same for most red wines. Not sure about cider because I don’t drink it, but in
general most of the regularly consumed alcoholic drinks have a lot fewer
carbohydrates than you’d think.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Do you mean to imply that premixed alcoholic beverages aren't regularly
consumed?

I suppose you mean the wine beer and spirits that people regularly consume
with a meal, or some such.

But also, there are plenty of people who regularly drink one or more premixed
alcoholic beverages.

~~~
mikenew
I should have said “many”, not “most”. I have no idea what percentage of
people consume wine, beer, hard liquor or mixed drinks. Just pointing out that
the carbohydrate content of red wine, lighter beers, and straight liquor is
not as high as you would think.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Ok, no worries, thanks for clearing that up.

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nate_meurer
The most damning evidence IMO is the promise, straight from the mouth of NIAAA
director George Koob, to suppress future research that might be critical of
the alcohol industry. Utterly disgraceful.

Koob's defense of that email -- that he was merely referring to research that
is "not of the highest scientific quality" \-- is pretty pathetic, given that
Jernigan's and Siegel's work apparently met the NIAAA's past and present
quality standards.

~~~
xixi77
TBH, I find it difficult to see value in that particular line of research: it
stands to reason that there would be a link between advertising and
consumption in all age groups, so spending money to confirm that seems
wasteful. Also, I haven't checked, but I'd be surprised if there hadn't
already been some studies done on this.

Of course the reason some people are upset is because they would like to see
restrictions on advertising, and were hoping another study would give them
another argument in favor of such. But a positive result does not imply that
such restrictions are necessary.

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fourthark
Yes, I'd be more concerned if they were suppressing studies that have to do
with actual health effects.

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pbiggar
It's funny how each time a scandal comes out in America, it's treated as if
it's new and separate. The truth is that there is one solid pattern in every
single American scandal, and that is corruption.

America is built on corruption, and is corrupt from head to toe.

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lfam
Is corruption really uniquely American? Every country and institution that
I've studied seems to suffer from corruption and my intuition is that
corruption is a universal element of human behavior.

~~~
pbiggar
I think most countries are corrupt, but the amount that it's normalized in
America is certainly unique. People in most countries act like corruption is a
blight, here it's not even commented on.

~~~
k3d
There are countries where it's normal and expected to pay bribes to every
governmental official you interact with, America the worst offender nor is not
unique in any respect.

~~~
pbiggar
Consider how you would get yourself out of prison. In one of those countries,
you pay the bribe. There's problems with that, but we know it's a bribe.

In America, we can't bribe our way out of prison, because the corruption is so
much deeper than that. You get sent to prison because of corruption you can't
even see:

\- the prison guard union lobbied the state congress for tougher pot laws via
"campaign donations" so that their members have jobs

\- the local police chief needs to be "tough on crime" so that the mayor gets
reelected, manifesting in "stop and frisk" laws

\- the local police department arrested you so they could confiscate your
vehicle, via DOJ-aided civil forfeiture laws

\- the police department negotiated a higher salary for their members, so long
as it was cost-neutral, so now they need to ticket poor people to make money,
which is how you got pulled over.

That's the gist of it (I haven't even gotten to private prisons, Fox News, or
the NRA)! And don't this this is a Republican problem either, Democrats have
been pretty bad at this sort of thing for the last 30 years too.

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jonbarker
Non moralist argument against the alcohol industry: most of the alcohol
revenue comes from a very concentrated core of heavy drinkers who blow through
the liver health guidelines and definitions of binge drinking. So the industry
would suffer a massive shock if the relatively small group of people damaging
their livers were to decide to stop doing so. This means that the industry
relies on the intentional harming of a small group of people's bodies in order
to survive.

~~~
brittohalloran
Do you have any data on this? There are certainly heavy consumers but my (not
data backed) feeling was that there's a fat tail - if there are thousands of
high consumption binge drinkers then there are millions of casual "several
drinks a week" drinkers that would dominate the actual dollars spent.

Also, unlike say internet bandwidth, there is actually a logistical limit to
how much alcohol you could consume in a week, and it doesn't seem like it
could be much more than 1 order of magnitude over the average casual consumer
(3-4 drinks vs. 30-40 per week).

~~~
tasty_freeze
Washington Post had an article and a chart on it. The top decile has 74 drinks
per week, way more than the bottom 90% combined.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think-
you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will-tell-you/?utm_term=.74527673ce0a)

~~~
brittohalloran
Unbelievable. Thanks. The top decile actually consume over 75% of the alcohol
(by number of drinks, probably less by dollars)

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CompelTechnic
Whenever news like this comes out it makes me more cynical towards any sort of
life sciences research that produces actionable health advice. Which is really
a shame, because I want to be able to decide and participate in which
activities are healthy!

~~~
sbenitoj
That’s why logic is superior to many “scientific” studies.

It’s clear that the environment we evolved in lacked much alcohol, therefore
studies showing alcohol is healthy should be taken with a grain of salt.

~~~
k3d
It’s clear that the environment we evolved in lacked much penicillin,
therefore studies showing use of penicillin is healthy should be taken with a
grain of salt.

~~~
sbenitoj
To be clear, over usage of antibiotics is a MASSIVE health issue. Penicillin
was an amazing discovery, but less than 100 years later we’re discovering
antibiotic resistance and lifelong gut issues due to antibiotic usage.

~~~
k3d
How do you know that this is a massive health issue? What pure logic brought
you to that conclusion?

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sorenn111
Does the NIH provide most funding to university researchers working in health
research?

~~~
tgb
It's the single largest source of such funding in the US (and I imagine in the
world, too), yes. I don't know that it's >50% though, but it's certainly a
large fraction. For example, it's budget is 4 times that of the NSF or CDC.

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TheCoelacanth
> The $100 million-dollar, 10-year study is now underway and will ultimately
> enroll 7,800 participants aged 50 or over at 16 sites worldwide. Half of the
> participants will abstain from hooch, while the rest will imbibe one serving
> a day. Scientists will track participants for an average of six years,
> looking at risks of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, and death.

Wow, how do you recruit people for a study like that? It would hard to
convince me either to completely abstain or to drink every single day for six
years, much less to have one of those randomly chosen for me.

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horsecaptin
Does everything in America need to be healthy in order for it to be legal? Is
that why the alcohol lobby so badly wants to prove that booze is good for us?

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
Depends on who is being hurt. Given the issue of drunk driving killing
children, and given the current push to restrict rights to save children, I
think informing the public of the number of children killed because of alcohol
is important so that we can push for banning it (not a total ban, but a ban of
the most dangerous stuff, which I will begin calling assault alcohol).

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francisofascii
I think heavier taxes and more limits would be a better approach rather than a
ban. Similar to smoking. In America we used to have to go to special stores
only open certain hours. Alcohol is everywhere now, grocery stores,
commercials, etc. Ideally there is a middle ground between prohibition and
ubiquitous.

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grandmczeb
> In America we used to have to go to special stores only open certain hours

That was (and is) entirely state dependent.

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kylek
I always thought it was kind of fascinating that dry counties "still" exist-

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dry_communities_by_U.S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dry_communities_by_U.S._state)

