Just Don’t Look at My Liver
Sometimes you just shake you head in wonder at the complete pointlessness of some research…
There is a prime example in the Herald today which declares Heavy drinking can cut risk of heart disease, says study.
“Drinking a bottle of wine a day, or half a dozen beers, cuts the risk of heart disease by more than half in men, an extraordinary study reports.
“In one of the largest studies on the link between alcohol and heart disease, researchers have found that the protective effects of a daily tipple are not limited to those who drink moderately, but also extend to those who consume at what are conventionally considered to be dangerously high levels.”
And the understatement of the year…
“British scientists said the study, published in the journal Heart, was “flawed”.”
And here I was thinking of another descriptive adverb beginning with “F”…
Perhaps someone can tell me what the purpose of finding out that the cardioprotective effect extends to toxic doses of alcohol, when you know that that amount of alcohol has massively bad health effects that easily wipe out any possible protection against heart attacks. I have no idea. It seems to me that some researchers just like to find things out, regardless of whether the information has any meaning in the real world. I guess they think it’s good to know that when an alcoholic dies of liver failure or heart failure then at least their risk of a heart attack was low.
I’m all for “pure” research, but that seems like it does not really increase the some total of human knowledge in any meaningful way.
In defense of the somewhat myopic authors, I suspect they were merely confirming the cardioprotective effect of alcohol in general (already a fairly pointless task) and they found they had all this data on really heavy drinkers and they just couldn’t help themselves…
Ah well, at least it’s not quite as bad as the researcher who discovered the amazing fact that complaints about ED waiting times were directly proportional to the length of wait in the ED.
Truly groundbreaking research.
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Nov 23 09 4:18 pm
But isn’t it all about trade offs? I trade off the benefits of drinking in terms of heart disease against the problems caused by drinking for other diseases. At least now I know there is such a trade off.
Paul Walker´s last blog ..How much greenhouse gas emission abatement is enough?
I’m not sure if a choice between death and death can be considered a “trade off”, Paul
Nov 24 09 12:07 pm
The trade-off is about the probability of death. If you have a history of heart problems in your family but not history of cancer, for example, drinking more to reduce the heart risk, while increasing the cancer risk, may be a gamble worth taking.
Paul Walker´s last blog ..EconTalk this week
Nov 24 09 5:28 pm
If you’re trying to get an overall risk assessment, you’ve gotta count the margins on which you’re reducing risk as well as those on which you’re increasing it. If you only worry about the latter, you’ll overestimate the overall risk you’re incurring.
Note that Alcohol Action NZ goes on about how the cardioprotective benefits of alcohol are “overstated”. This most recent study, which seems to control for the “bad health former drinker” confound, gives measures of cardioprotection higher than Corrao’s 2000 estimates, and by a good deal.
Eric Crampton´s last blog ..Light binge drinkers
Nov 24 09 7:00 pm
PaulL: If you have a history of heart problems in your family but not history of cancer, for example, drinking more to reduce the heart risk, while increasing the cancer risk, may be a gamble worth taking.
While that might make good economic sense, Paul, it makes no medical sense. Alcohol is so toxic to most organs (including the heart) in high doses that it would be impossible to make a rational assessment. A large amount of alcohol does not merely increase your cancer risk, it damages your brain, heart, liver and pancreas all at the same time. The cardioprotective effect of alcohol simply isn’t strong enough to mitigate this.
Eric: I agree that Alcohol Action NZ are trying to downplay the cardioprotective benefits. But the level of benefit is not really material. All the clinical studies on alcohol consumption show that more than 3 units of alcohol a day (a normal beer and a glass of wine), or more than 20 units of alcohol a week, will increase your all cause mortality even when trauma is discounted.
Small to moderate alcohol = good. Excess = bad.