A study commissioned by President Joe Biden’s administration to investigate Health harms associated with alcohol It was released independently on Tuesday, after President Donald Trump’s administration decided not to feature the researchers’ findings in the report New dietary guidelines It faced opposition from the alcohol industry and a congressional committee.
The results of the study, published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, were consistent with years of research, saying health risks rise with just one drink a day, and no level of alcohol has a protective effect on mortality. Even the levels are considered “average” Raise the risks The researchers found premature deaths and more than 200 diseases, including heart disease and cancer.
The new study was one of two government reviews aimed at helping guide new dietary guidelines. The guidelines, released earlier this year, advised drinking “less alcohol for better overall health”. The authors of the independently released study say they did not provide detailed practical advice about the risks of drinking.
One of the officials participating in the study was commissioned by Democratic Biden administration accused Republican Trump administration of “marginalizing” research – an allegation the Trump administration denies.
Robert Vincent, a former Alcohol and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration official who led the years-long effort, made the accusations in an op-ed published alongside the study. Vincent was laid off last year as part of Government reduction in force.
“The challenges facing alcohol policy today are not rooted in scientific uncertainty,” Vincent wrote. “What remains in dispute is whether the evidence will usefully guide policy when it conflicts with commercial interests.”
The dispute over the study highlights increasingly tense relations between the medical and scientific community and the Trump administration, which has long questioned or ignored existing science in its policy making and launched a slew of criticisms. Veteran scholars of the federal workforce and cuts to scientific grants that supporters say help keep the United States at the forefront of medical innovation.
After the study’s researchers released a draft report last year, the alcohol industry rallied against it, launching campaigns to discredit its work. The House Oversight Committee also criticized the study, issuing a report earlier this year that called it “fraught with bias” and accused the study’s authors of drawing predetermined conclusions based on their prior research and affiliations.
Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Health and Human Services, dismissed any notion that the study was not taken into account.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the USDA “reviewed the study along with the broader body of scientific evidence available and followed the established process for developing the Dietary Guidelines for Americans for 2025-2030,” she said. “The guidelines are based on the totality of the scientific record, not on any single report or analysis.”
Vincent told The Associated Press in an interview that researchers underwent a comprehensive examination to ensure there were no conflicts and the results were scientifically sound. He said that while in the Trump administration, he was “told to kill the study” but did not. HHS did not immediately respond to this claim.
The Trump administration earlier this year issued new dietary guidelines that advised consuming “less alcohol for better overall health.” The researchers said they do not dispute this advice, but their findings support a more detailed and robust recommendation that current adult drinkers consume one drink or fewer per day.
“I’m glad they have a message that aligns with our science, which is that less is more,” said Dr. Timothy Naimi, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria and one of the study’s authors. “But giving people quantitative information is essential to establishing truly useful guidelines.”
The study differs from other research commissioned by the government to help inform dietary guidelines on the issue, which said moderate alcohol use is associated with a lower risk of death from all causes but also an increased risk of some diseases.
Their study did not look at deaths from all causes, but instead examined deaths specifically attributable to alcohol to avoid confounding factors, said Priscilla Martinez-Matyszek, one of the authors of the new study and deputy scientific director at the Public Health Institute’s Alcohol Research Group.
Martinez Matyszek also addressed an issue raised by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Director Dr. Mehmet Oz In his explanations of the new guidelines: that drinking is a “social lubricant that brings people together” and that although not drinking is preferable, being social has health benefits.
“I don’t know of any studies that have inferred social impact from health impact,” she said.
Al Nuaimi said the new findings are “in line with the latest science that basically shows that less is more when it comes to health.”
For example, a 2019 study in The Lancet found that moderate drinking slightly increases the risk of stroke and high blood pressure and offers no protective effects on health.
Moderate drinking was once thought to have heart benefits, but better research methods have thrown cold water on that idea. Older studies compared groups of people by how much they drank rather than randomly assigning people to drink or not, so they couldn’t prove cause and effect. When researchers adjusted for things like education levels, income, and access to health care, the benefits tended to disappear.
About half of Americans ages 12 or older have had a drink in the past month, making it the most common addictive substance in the United States, researchers said. One drink is equivalent to about a 12-ounce can of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine, or a shot of liquor.
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