I look at two papers in this blog entry, one of which will be questionable, the other of which is well written.
The Alcohol industry is funding a “Moderate Drinking” study
The New York Times has published an exposé last month showing how the NIH solicited contributions from the alcohol insustry for a “Moderate drinking” study. It would seem that, in order to fund an expensive study on drinking called the “Moderate Alcohol and Cardiovascular Health Trial (M.A.C.H.)” trial, the alcohol industry has spent millions of dollars to make this study a reality.
Whatever finding this study has about moderate drinking are at best suspect, especially for anyone who is a potential alcoholic; the NY Times piece reports that “many people whose health might be compromised by light drinking — anyone
with a history of addiction, psychiatric, liver or kidney problems,
certain cancers or a family history of breast cancer — will not be
allowed to participate. People who have never drunk alcohol also are
excluded.”
Knowing how studies are quoted out of context by the kinds of people with an agenda against Alcoholics Anonymous, and knowing how often those kinds of people try to justify moderate drinking for alcoholics, even though that is, as I pointed out before and will point out again, is a fool’s errand, I would not be surprised if those kinds of people, years down the road, use this study to “prove” that Alcoholics Anonymous’ model of abstinence is “harmful.”
A realistic look at Alcoholics Anonymous
Marc Galanter, who helped write a paper showing how prayer helps AA members stay sober, has another excellent paper out there.
Entitled “Combining medically assisted treatment and Twelve-Step programming: a perspective and review”, this paper goes over, among many other things, why Cochrane 2006 had methodological issues in concluding that AA does not work any better than other methods.
A very good paper well worth reading. Nicely enough, this paper is not paywalled.
