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?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
Here at least, in the land of Miller, Milwaukee’s Best and Cows (Spotted) in 12-oz glass bottles, it will do exactly zero. My alternate suggestion: require all alcohol containers to show a typical defense attorney’s DUI fee schedule. And a QR code for Uber/Lyft/BarBuddies, along with an average hired car fee. FWIW.
We already have California Prop 65 labels on just about everything we buy these days, waring us about fantasy cancer “risks”. I don’t think they have been very effective. Maybe the Feds will now have to have labels about alcohol on everything that can be “associated” with alcohol, such as wine glasses, shot glasses, all the equipment used to make mixed drinks, etc, etc. Maybe women will be required to sign a certificate when they order alcohol in a restaurant or bar that they are not pregnant, and don’t plan to become pregnant for the next 30 days after consuming a drink.
I know that most people never open the users manuals for stuff they buy, but some of us want to understand how things like our cars work, and it is my experience that ALL of the users manuals I have seen, for EVERYTHING I buy, these days, are filled with warnings, cautions, reminders, and suggestions about reducing hazards, and very little explains how to use or maintain the stuff. We recently bought a Coravin device for pouring wine without disturbing the cork, but the very limited users manual had no information whatsoever about cleaning it. And one manual for a vehicle did not include a statement of the fuel tank capacity (“Info not available at time of printing”), while the instructions for configuring the system to turn on the dome light could only be executed in the dark.
I blame the insurance companies and the liability lawyers and the government.
Beat me to it, rxc. California Prop 65 labels are an ongoing joke in my business – firearms manufacture and repair. Literally every supplier that I use from wood to metals to plastics to chemicals and door stops have all embraced the theory that it is better to label everything they sell rather than risk non-compliance. The result is a collective yawn from the public and a suspicion on my part that a cancer warning label on the ubiquitous labels themselves cannot be far behind.
Since the advent of the organic chemical industry in the 19th century our environment is flooded with novel chemicals for most of which the intrinsic carcinogenic and other effects of each chemical on its own are unknown let alone the possible synergistic results of combinations. If a chemical as seen as having uses it will be used, only years later will harmful effects be noticed.
A current examples is the chemicals of the perfluoroalkyl and polyfluroalkol families. These are extremely useful but we are now aware of accumulation of such PFAS and PFOS in human bodies and their negative effects. However as soon as problems with one of the family are found industry replaces its use with a slightly different but similar compound which is not yet known to be dangerous.
Alcohol on the other hand has been around as long as agriculture and maybe for the 300,000 year existence of our species and many people get pleasure from it. Pleasure for a slightly higher cancer risk is a trade off many will accept.
Members of species homo sapiens have a strong attraction to mind influencing drugs and prohibition not only fails to lessen use but has a strong opposite effect. The main argument for prohibition is to stop causing misery but I argue that the opposite effect dominates, misery causes drug use. Unhappy people like those of an excluded underclass have strong needs to change their states of mind. Punishing them for it with 5 years of prison (H/T US President Joe Biden) can only cause use to increase, this is called positive feedback.
Another example of our useless government wasting our money on stupid studies which are then used to justify spending even more of our money on nonsense. It’s common for that nonsense to include stupid regulations added to the steaming garbage pile of regulations that already afflict us.
“Scientific” studies are remarkably good at finding results that please their funders.
I might be more influenced by a label that warned me that alcohol would make me
Last week a couple of glasses of wine a day were good for you, now they’ll give you cancer. And in 20 years a couple of drinks a day will be good for you again. We’ve seen this cycle with eggs, coffee, and other things.
And somehow I doubt a warning label will change anyone’s mind about drinking.
This is likely part of the fading death throes of the Biden/Harris “cancer moonshot.” To “end cancer as we know it,” something must be done. . .
As a bone doctor more interested in quality of life (rather than simply extending it), this latest pronouncement really… drives me to drink. Even if the cancer risk is real and not just hype, it still fundamentally misses what I believe is one of the basic truths (from the great Petr Skrabanek): Life is a sexually transmitted condition that is invariably fatal. Or, as the even greater Nortin Hadler put it (I think from this book – https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt81bhx – a link! Happy Tuesday!), medical care, in the limit, can change your cause of death, but not its time. All this to say: what’s missing from Dr. Murthy’s analysis is the essential and often neglected examination of opportunity cost (which, frankly, seems to be absent from many Bright Ideas from the left). Even if the data are valid, and even if one more warning label will be signal rather than noise, there’s no guarantee that people’s lives will actually be better by abstaining! (And by the way, I just realized I haven’t seen Bowmore 18 mentioned here recently. I truly hope our host hasn’t gone to the dark side—Sparkling Water O’Clock just doesn’t cut it.)
PS There’s a saying that an alcoholic is one who drinks more than his doctor. If you’d like to drink twice a day and still consider yourself within the limits, feel free to join my practice in spirit (or, should I say, in spirits).
[Ed. Note: Bowmore 18, every Friday at scotch o’clock.]
We choose to label innumerable products. We choose to label innumerable products in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are imperious.
The Surgeon General is contradicting established science in regard to moderate alcohol consumption and his erroneous claims will harm Americans. In December, the National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine published a report indicating that moderate alcohol use is associated with longer life. In particular, moderate alcohol reduces cardiovascular disease. There is no evidence for increased obesity or cognitive decline e.g. Alzheimer’s.
The only demonstrated negative effect of moderate alcohol is increased breast cancer. Obviously, that is a major concern for some women and should be factored into behavior. According to the report, there is no evidence for harm with other cancers.
“A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reviews scientific evidence on the relationship between moderate alcohol consumption and health outcomes. Requested by Congress, the report is intended to inform the next edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The National Academies’ report does not offer dietary recommendations or advice.”
If a link is allowed, here is one:
https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2024/12/new-report-reviews-evidence-on-moderate-alcohol-consumption-and-health-impacts
I know you don’t like tummy rubs, but I got kick out of your introductory paragraph.
[Tony Kornheiser voice] “It’s a classic!”
Maybe the pronouncements of government scientists should come with warning labels, given the results of the study by Lysenko et al., and the millions of Soviet peasants who could not be reached for follow-up.
And who was it who came up with the silly idea that we need Miranda warnings?
Miranda’s lawyer. “The written confession was admitted into evidence at trial despite the objection of the defense attorney”