There are more stickers on a ladder than on a NASCAR race car, the purpose of which is to putatively warn you not to eat the ladder, insert it into your ear or climb up to the very tippy-top rung after injecting heroin into your veins. Okay, I exaggerate just a bit to make a point. Do you read the warning labels?
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy now argues that alcoholic beverages should have warning labels too.
Alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, and alcoholic beverages should carry a warning label as packs of cigarettes do, the U.S. surgeon general said on Friday.
It is the latest salvo in a fierce debate about the risks and benefits of moderate drinking as the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans are about to be updated. For decades, moderate drinking was said to help prevent heart attacks and strokes.
That perception has been embedded in the dietary advice given to Americans. But growing research has linked drinking, sometimes even within the recommended limits, to various types of cancer.
It’s not as if alcohol doesn’t already require warnings.
Labels currently affixed to bottles and cans of alcoholic beverages warn about drinking while pregnant or before driving and operating other machinery, and about general “health risks.”
And, according to Murthy, it’s a contributing factor to 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 deaths each year. Whether or not this is an accurate understanding of the cause/effect is a separate, though very real, question.
Inexplicably, Murthy did not address the comprehensive review of evidence on alcohol and health issued two weeks earlier by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS).
Contrary to the surgeon general’s claims, the NAS report determined that “no conclusion could be drawn regarding an association between moderate alcohol consumption and oral cavity, pharyngeal, esophageal, or laryngeal cancers.” In addition, the NAS report determined that “no conclusion could be drawn regarding the association between moderate alcohol consumption compared with lifetime nonconsumers and risk of colorectal cancer.” Interestingly, a June 2024 study in Scientific Reports, not cited by either the NAS or Murthy, found that moderate drinking “was a protective factor for colorectal cancer.” The NAS did find with moderate certainty that moderate drinking was associated with a slight increase in the risk of female breast cancer.
Putting aside whether the cancer scare is real or hype, is it helpful to add another warning label to alcoholic beverages that they may cause cancer? While it may be arguable that a warning label about fetal alcohol syndrome makes sense given that some pregnant persons women might not be bright enough to be aware of the risks to their unborn child without it, is cancer a comparable risk such that it too compels warning the unwary that drinking, whether a lot or a little, will “contribute” to cancer?
While most cancer deaths occur at drinking levels that exceed the current recommended dietary guidelines, the risk for cancers of the breast, the mouth and the throat may rise with consumption of as little as one drink a day, or even less, Dr. Murthy said on Friday.
Overall, one of every six breast cancer cases is attributable to alcohol consumption, Dr. Murthy said. More recent studies have also linked moderate alcohol consumption to certain forms of heart disease, including atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia.
If Murthy is correct about what the studies show, and correct that it’s alcohol, is affixing another label to your beer can or bottle of Chateaux Margaux going to help? And if it’s true that alcohol causes cancer, will the fix that starts with a warning label end there?
Nonetheless, Murthy wants to slap cancer warning labels on beer, wine, and liquor, and “reassess the recommended limits for alcohol consumption.” Even more worryingly, he wants to “incorporate proven alcohol reduction strategies into population-level cancer prevention and initiatives and plans.” Citing the work of neo-prohibitionist researchers like Timothy Naimi, Murthy’s strategies would doubtlessly include “evidence-based policies that reduce the availability and affordability of alcohol (e.g., increasing alcohol taxes, reducing alcohol outlet density).” The surgeon general is evidently eager to deploy a questionable cancer scare in his campaign to impose stealth prohibition. For your own good, of course.
It will likely surprise no one that drinking to excess is not a healthy thing to do. But is scaring people that one glass of wine with dinner “may” cause cancer the solution? Is there anything that doesn’t cause cancer if you research hard enough? And should there be a label on your beer can warning of this possibility, will it change anything?
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