ArticleThe Milbank quarterly2020
Is Moderate Drinking Protective Against Heart Disease? The Science, Politics and History of a Public Health Conundrum.
Article in The Milbank quarterly, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trends and cross-country inequalities of alcohol use disorders: findings from the global burden of disease study 2021.Globalization and health · 2025Article
- Effects of moderate beer consumption on immunity and the gut microbiome in immunosuppressed mice.Bioscience of microbiota, food and health · 2025Article
- Analysis of data from the NHANES 1999-2018 and Mendelian randomization studies reveals the relationship between alcohol use and rheumatoid arthritis.Nutrition journal · 2024Article
- Limited alcohol consumption and lower risk of diabetes: can we believe our own eyes?The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2022Article
- Age, Period, and Cohort Effects in Alcohol Use in the United States in the 20th and 21st Centuries: Implications for the Coming Decades.Alcohol research : current reviews · 2022Article
- Alcohol, cardiovascular disease and industry funding: A co-authorship network analysis of systematic reviews.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2021Article
- Consensus and Controversy in the Debate over the Biphasic Impact of Alcohol Consumption on the Cardiovascular System.Nutrients · 2021Review
- Health Disparities and Cardiovascular Disease.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Mendel's laws, Mendelian randomization and causal inference in observational data: substantive and nomenclatural issues.European journal of epidemiology · 2020Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Policy Points For more than 40 years, most research by epidemiologists, social scientists, and alcohol policy experts found that moderate alcohol consumption was cardioprotective. In the early 2000s, that consensus was shaken by new critics who subjected the previous research to vigorous methodological and empirical analysis, precipitating a bitter controversy, seemingly unresolvable despite numerous observational epidemiological studies. The effort to finally put that debate to rest through a large, multiyear randomized controlled trial under the aegis of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, generated external criticism and adverse newspaper coverage, particularly because the trial was largely funded by the alcohol industry, forcing National Institutes of Health leadership to abruptly terminate the study shortly after it started. In the absence of definitive evidence and given the contentious debate over the risks and benefits of moderate alcohol consumption, those who formulate health policy have a responsibility to clearly acknowledge to the public the existence of evidentiary uncertainty when making recommendations.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.