Regarding U.S. Surgeon General's call to add #cancer warnings to alcoholic drinks:

"That idea that moderate drinking has health benefits came from imperfect studies comparing groups of people by how much they drink. Usually, that was measured at one point in time. And none of the studies randomly assigned people to drink or not drink, so they couldn’t prove cause and effect.

People who report drinking moderately tend to have higher levels of education, higher incomes and better access to health care, said Naimi.

“It turns out that when you adjust for those things, the benefits tend to disappear,” he said.

Another problem: Most studies didn’t include younger people. Almost half of the people who die from alcohol-related causes die before the age of 50.

“If you’re studying people who survived into middle age, didn’t quit drinking because of a problem and didn’t become a heavy drinker, that’s a very select group,” Naimi said. “It creates an appearance of a benefit for moderate drinkers that is actually a statistical illusion.”

Other studies challenge the idea that alcohol has benefits. These studies compare people with a gene variant that makes it unpleasant to drink to people without the gene variant. People with the variant tend to drink very little or not at all. One of these studies found people with the gene variant have a lower risk of heart disease — another blow to the idea that #alcohol protects people from heart problems."
apnews.com/article/drinking-al…