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• Re: BBC reports drinkers "healthier" than abstainers
  Fernando Rodríguez Artalejo
  Published on: 12 September 2001
• BBC reports drinkers "healthier" than abstainers
  Phil Barnett
  Published on: 12 September 2001

• Published on: 12 September 2001

  Re: BBC reports drinkers "healthier" than abstainers

  • Fernando Rodríguez Artalejo

  Dear Editor

  We thank Mr. Barnett for his interest in our article, even though his comments suggest he has not read it. Following there are some notes on Barnett’s comments:

  We have never received funds from the beverage industry, either for this research or for any of the several studies we have done on the relationship between alcohol and health.

  Contrary to Barnett’s comments, we finished our article a...

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  Dear Editor

  We thank Mr. Barnett for his interest in our article, even though his comments suggest he has not read it. Following there are some notes on Barnett’s comments:

  We have never received funds from the beverage industry, either for this research or for any of the several studies we have done on the relationship between alcohol and health.

  Contrary to Barnett’s comments, we finished our article alerting against undue use of our research findings. In particular, we stated in the final paragraph of the manuscript: "As to the study’s practical implications, the negative association between alcohol and suboptimal health should not be used to promote even the moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages".

  Clinical advice and public policy on alcohol consumption is a complex topic, which should be based on scientific evidence (of which our article is just one small piece), resources, and values or preferences of the people. Posing the debate in visceral rather than rational terms (those that integrates the above components of decision making), as Mr. Barnett does, is getting out of the way for evidence-oriented public policy.

  Fernando Rodríguez Artalejo MD, PhD.

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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• Published on: 12 September 2001

  BBC reports drinkers "healthier" than abstainers

  • Phil Barnett, Business Consultant

  Dear Editor

  , I trust peers in the fields of Epidemiology and Community Health will have ample opportunity to scrutinize the hapless "study" from Spain published in your journal this week as reported on BBC News web site and I wish to foreshadow their likely findings of the so-called scientists whose study linked more and more alcohol consumption with "feeling healthier" as laughable and very unscientific.

  ...

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  Dear Editor

  , I trust peers in the fields of Epidemiology and Community Health will have ample opportunity to scrutinize the hapless "study" from Spain published in your journal this week as reported on BBC News web site and I wish to foreshadow their likely findings of the so-called scientists whose study linked more and more alcohol consumption with "feeling healthier" as laughable and very unscientific.

  I feel it is a great disservice to the global community as well as to the goal of health education, the penultimate responsibility of the public health professional, to propose that indiscriminate and over indulgence in alcoholic beverages could ever possibly be linked to "healthier" anything.

  Every 5th grade student knows alcohol is a poison and will damage cells and organs upon entering the body. Detrimental effects on the brain and nervous system are well established. The fact that the body can recover and continue to tolerate intake of the poison and that the physical & psychological effects of depression are masked by temporary "good" feelings is equally well known. However, to report a link of a healthier outcome to alcohol consumption and an even healthier outcome to increased consumption serves only the financial interest of the beverage industry and may lull the demented drinkers into a further fantasy that their drinking habit is not only not a detriment to their health, but may some how improve their health.

  Certainly any sober person can use empirical evidence to discredit that notion. If simple facts of reality are going to be leapfrogged over just to play in the scientists’ sandbox of childish notions, certainly less important and less worthy publications can be used in this way to publish that nonsense rather than risk tainting the reputation of this fine journal.

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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