The Department of Health and Human Services has pulled back a government report warning of a link between cancer and drinking even small amounts of alcohol, according to the authors of the research.
Their report, the Alcohol Intake and Health Study, warned that even one drink a day raises the risk of liver cirrhosis, oral and esophageal cancer, and injuries. The scientists who wrote it were told that the final version would not be submitted to Congress, as had been planned.
The report is one of two assessments that were to be used to shape the new U.S. Dietary Guidelines’ recommendations on alcohol consumption. Its early findings were reported by The New York Times in January; a full draft remained on the H.H.S. website as of Friday afternoon.
A competing report, written by a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine panel, came to a conclusion long supported by the industry: that moderate drinking is healthier than not drinking. Some panelists came under criticism for financial ties to alcohol makers.
The academies report was requested by Congress in 2022, after the scientific review for the last version of the dietary guidelines in 2020 stated that health risks associated with low consumption might have been underestimated. The alcohol industry has strongly criticized such findings and opposed efforts to tighten drinking recommendations.
H.H.S. did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did representatives of the alcohol industry.
Mike Marshall, chief executive of the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance, a nonprofit that aims to reduce the harms of alcohol, said H.H.S. was “doing the work of the alcohol industry.”
“They’re burying the report so the information about the health consequences is not widely known,” Mr. Marshall said.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has decried a “chronic disease epidemic” sweeping the country. But he has said little about alcohol’s impact on American health since taking office.
Consumption of both alcohol and tobacco was absent from the first Make America Healthy Again report released in May. Mr. Kennedy (like his boss, President Trump) has said he does not drink.
In public comments on the Alcohol Intake and Health Study, wine and beer vendors and representatives of the alcohol industry urged federal officials to rely only on the competing academies report supporting moderate drinking. They called the alcohol intake study “alarming and misguided.”
The decision not to publish that study was first reported by Vox. In June, Reuters reported that the upcoming Dietary Guidelines would scrap the longstanding recommendation: that women have no more than one drink a day, and men no more than two.
Instead, the guidelines would include a brief statement that people should drink in moderation, Reuters said.
“What people need to know is that the risk of serious morbidities and mortality, and chronic disease, increases as alcohol consumption increases, and it even increases at low levels of consumption,” said Katherine M. Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who was one of the report’s authors.
Dr. Keyes said the alcohol intake study did not make recommendations and noted that people do many things that carry risks, like driving cars.
But, she added, “The American public deserves to know what they’re putting in their body and what kind of health outcomes they can cause.”
The authors now plan to submit their analysis for publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal, she said.
The Alcohol Intake and Health Study was one of several to have upended the long-dominant narrative that moderate drinking was not harmful and might have health benefits, particularly for the heart.
Newer studies have questioned the methodology used in older studies, and researchers have increasingly focused on alcohol’s contribution to cancer.
In January, Dr. Vivek Murthy, then the surgeon general, called for putting labels on alcoholic beverages to warn consumers that drinking increases the risk of breast cancer, colon cancer and at least five other malignancies.
He said that drinking directly contributed to 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 related deaths each year.
Americans are getting the message. A Gallup poll in August found drinking at an all-time low in the United States, with only 54 percent of adults saying they consumed alcohol. A majority said they believed that even one to two drinks a day was harmful to health. Sales of wine and spirits have dipped.
The academies report concluded that moderate drinking was linked to fewer heart attack and stroke deaths and fewer deaths overall, compared to not drinking. It acknowledged that moderate drinking was linked to a small but significant increase in breast cancer in women, but said that there wasn’t enough evidence to link moderate consumption to other cancers.
The National Cancer Institute, among other medical organizations, disagreed.
The alcohol intake study assessed relationships between different levels of average alcohol consumption and the risk of dying from health conditions that can be caused by drinking.
The research found some benefits for those having one drink a day: a lower risk of diabetes for women, and a lowered risk of ischemic stroke among both men and women.
But even at that modest level, women were more likely to develop liver cancer. And just occasional heavy drinking nullified the protection against stroke.
“The key message is that drinking two drinks a day may be moderate from a social perspective, but when it comes to health, it’s a pretty risky amount,” said Dr. Timothy Naimi, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and one of the authors.
“A man who drinks two drinks every day on average has a one in 25 chance of dying prematurely from alcohol.”
Roni Caryn Rabin is a Times health reporter focused on maternal and child health, racial and economic disparities in health care, and the influence of money on medicine.
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