Former BBC TV science producer Tony Edwards explains how ‘the authorities’ are trying to demonise any amount of alcohol as a serious health risk, when the medical evidence, discussed in his new book, in fact shows the opposite, particularly from red wine
Opinion polls show that people are confused about health and alcohol, wine in particular. One week we are told that drinking can be good for you, the next that you will die an early death if you touch a single drop. For example, within the space of two days in June came two stories: ‘Women should drink no more than six glasses of wine a year’ and ‘Your five-a-day now includes wine’. Totally opposing public health messages, astonishingly from the same Daily Telegraph newspaper.
This is not at all unusual. Stretching back years, there has been a consistent pattern of conflicting ‘alcohol and health’ press stories; one day drinking is harmful, the next it’s beneficial – not only confusing, but sounds absurd. After all, with tobacco, lighting up is always bad news for your health. But not with drinking. Why?
The reason is simple, say doctors at Harvard University, one of the world’s leading alcohol research centres. To the question, ‘Is drinking good or bad for you?”, they answer ‘yes’! Alcohol is a paradox: too much can harm you, but too little can shorten your life.
I am a medical research journalist who enjoys delving into medical journals and extracting evidence that contradicts received opinions. And the received opinion about drinking is increasingly that alcohol is almost as harmful as tobacco and that it should be pretty well banned. For example, at one end, some online TV programs give trigger warnings if they show people drinking (for example, Clarkson’s Farm has a ‘Smoking, Alcohol, Foul Language’ alert) and at the other, there may soon be cancer warning labels on bottles of wine, beer and spirits, just like tobacco (Times 4/7/25).
However, the medical evidence is overwhelming that alcohol is nothing like tobacco. Yes, it is true that drinking does raise your risk of certain (a very few) cancers, but it is equally true that it decreases your risk of other cancers, another paradox. But ‘the authorities’ do not want you to know about it; in fact, they do their damndest to cover it up.
Current guidelines
Their main weapon is by relentlessly reducing the ‘guidelines’ – the amounts of alcohol they say you should not exceed. Year by year, the quantity of alcohol officially declared to be safe to drink has been reduced. In almost every country round the world, the guidelines are now much lower than 20 years ago. For example, in 2016 the UK halved its advised intake from four ‘units’ of alcohol a day to two, while marijuana-smoking Holland has now slashed theirs to one unit (a maiden aunt’s glass of sherry) and France shocked its buveursby declaring that as little as the standard quart de vin rouge, which most French men have with meals, would send them to an early grave!
That downbeat message has been reinforced by campaigns such as Dry January, initiated in 2014 by a British so-called ‘alcohol charity’. Understand-ably, many people now believe that alcohol is more harmful than was thought and that it might be prudent to give it up altogether – as with tobacco.
Read the complete article in issue 114.