newsletter covering the management, finance, regulatory, marketing and other business aspects of the wine industry. Wine Business Insider is now the largest circulation trade newsletter in the American wine industry.

In addition to the Insider, Perdue regularly writes for the San Francisco Chronicle.

THE FRENCH PARADOX CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The New Temperance Movement And How Your Government Lies to You

In its document, Healthy People 2000, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) set as one of its goals, a 25 percent reduction in American per capita consumption of alcohol. This goal was urged and supported by one of the main anti-alcohol advocacy groups, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a Ralph Nader-sponsored organization. In speeches at numerous public gatherings, HHS and CSPI personnel have said that this reduction is just a beginning and that they would like to come as close as possible to eliminating alcohol consumption in the United States.

This parallels exactly the alcohol consumption policies of the United Nations-sponsored World Health Organization (WHO), which predated the U.S. government's by almost a decade.

In the United States, the Surgeon General and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), both part of HHS, are primarily responsible for carrying out these policy

decisions.

The fact that alcohol reduction or prohibition goals have been officially embodied in American public policy despite the potential increases in deaths from cardiovascular disease and overall increases in the death rate -- illustrates clearly that the decision-making process rests in the hands of what alcohol abuse expert David J. Pittman calls "The New Temperance Movement."

"In 1933, the United States repealed the constitutional amendment that prohibited the manufacture, sales and distribution of alcoholic beverages. But in the last decade, U.S. society has witnessed the emergence of a new temperance movement which has as its goal the reduction of per capita consumption of alcoholic beverages ... as well as the prohibition [emphasis added] of drinking in specific sex, age and status groups as well as in allegedly biologically vulnerable groups" said Pittman, who is a widely published alcohol-abuse researcher in the Sociology Department of Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. His remarks were published along with a series of other papers in Society, Culture and Drinking Patterns Reexamined, a book from the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies.

Pittman's paper, and others, noted that the federal government and its allied anti-alcohol advocacy groups have targeted for prohibition measures:

-- women

-- pregnant women

-- Native Americans

-- African Americans

-- the poor and

-- the young

The anti-alcohol coalition apparently feels these groups are vulnerable, unable to personally resist abuse or to make valid personal decisions about drinking.

Abuse Treatment Community Divided

Because the government agencies charged with fighting alcohol abuse promote only their official message, the impression is left that alcohol abuse experts are united behind it. In fact, many prominent and respected experts in the alcohol abuse field feel the government's stance is badly flawed.

One of those experts is Yale professor Selden Bacon, regarded as a pioneer in modern studies of alcohol consumption and abuse. He has charged that U.S. government policy is guided by ideology instead of science and prone to distort data to serve an ideological purpose. As a result that policy has contributed very little to reducing abuse.

In a chapter he wrote for the book, Alcohol: The Development of Sociological Perspectives on Use and Abuse, Bacon writes: "A great deal of information, `data,' and communication about alcohol and alcohol 'problems' are available. The largest part of the communication is noticeably remote from scientifically oriented research [emphasis added]. Rather, studies are usually directed toward proving or disproving this or that particular `answer,' gaining an ally, condemning an enemy and so on."

Bacon also blasts current alcohol problem researchers because their research "centers on the pathological orientation of studies. They are restricted to consideration of the awful, the strange, the evil, the frightening, the `sick' or the `problematic'."

Bacon said later in his chapter, "If astronomers were to limit study to exploding stars or biologists did research only on what were called diseases and freaks, there would presumably be violent critical reaction. The alcohol and drug fields of study need to mature out of their rather primitive orientation to the deviant..."

Other abuse treatment experts say that one reason the government funds little research into the "normal" patterns of drinking is because the people who control research grants consider all drinking abnormal.

In addition, Selden says that the current policy behind the alcohol problem movement is "the typical absence of observation of both alcohol `problems' and of alcohol beverage consumption or consumers. Those authoring such studies rely almost entirely on the records and individual assertions of others, most of whom are not researchers by any stretch of the imagination. Reports of tax receipts or sales are accepted as evidence of consumption in a given population. Records of arrests by police for drunkenness are accepted as evidence of the numbers of persons involved. In most scientific fields such alleged scientific data would be a subject for joking. That such so-called data and statistical correlations of combinations of such numbers are taken seriously is striking evidence of the low quality of research in some areas of alcohol studies."

Money may be one of the prime motivations behind this slanted, non-scientific orientation and many of its incorrect or inflated claims. In a paper published in the November 1989 issue of the Journal of Alcohol Studies, Pittman and University of California, Davis professor Dale M. Heien, assert that alcohol control advocates both in and outside the government, "tend to emphasize the extensiveness of a problem in order to attract more attention to their cause. Thus, current economic cost estimates of alcohol abuse can be viewed as one dimension of claims-making activity on the part of the federal government to attract greater attention."

In other words, government and private alcohol control advocates can attract more money and assure their continued employment by distorting data to make the problem look worse than it really is or by ignoring data which does not support their positions.

One glaring example of such distortions is the estimate of the social costs of alcohol abuse. In its 1990 "Seventh Special Report to Congress on Alcohol and Health," the NIAAA relied on a 1984 study that put the costs at $136.8 billion. In doing so, they ignored a 1990 study conducted for the Federal Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration which put the figure at $85.8 billion -- about 41 percent lower. The lower estimate came from a study conducted by Dorothy Rice, former Chief of the National Center for Health Statistics.

Despite knowing of the fatal flaws in the NIAAA study (such as assertions that alcohol abusers have per capita incomes more than 10 percent higher than non-abusers or that tuberculosis is caused by alcohol) the NIAAA continues to use the incorrect, higher figure.

Bacon commented on this phenomenon, writing that studies like this tend to be "quite fanciful in nature and almost always seem to show close to complete support for whatever program the sponsoring group is favoring."

To build support for its budget and its cause, the NIAAA also uses inflated figures for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

As we point out in this book's chapter on FAS, the observed, medically diagnosed incidence of this tragic result of abuse has never been more than one-tenth the rates asserted by NIAAA. To accept the government's estimates would require the assumption that America's physicians mis-diagnose 90 percent of the cases -- a situation which has no valid scientific support.

NIAAA is not always so blatant in using grossly inflated statistics. When faced with irrefutable scientific evidence (such as the scores of studies on the beneficial effects of moderate alcohol consumption) the NIAAA takes a different tack. The NIAAA ignores the data; uses old, preliminary or unpublished (therefore not peer-reviewed) studies to back up its position and semantically distorts the analysis of the data in order to better support its official policy position.

Government Misinformation

The NIAAA's actions are typical of what Bacon describes as "the `soft' thinking" so often characteristic of anti- or control or alleviate-alcohol problem movements. This is indicated by behavior and processes such as:

-- Describing the whole in terms of only one of the many parts of the whole;

-- Allowing metaphors to become descriptions of reality;

-- Confusing the ideal or the wish with reality;

-- Utilizing one's own movement's propaganda as factual evidence;

-- Accepting the proposition that because one thing preceded another, it necessarily was the cause of the other;

-- Accepting the assertions of Mr. or Ms. X as an expert in all areas of knowledge because he or she was an authority in one such area;

-- Asserting that recognizable complex phenomena may be satisfactorily described and fully understood in the terms of one field of expertise and

-- Relying upon ignorance, deliberate falsification and manifestly ethnocentric (or other group-centric) thinking.

Lies:Subtle and Not So Subtle

Many of the items on Bacon's list of faults can be found in a single document released by the U.S. government in 1992. At the request of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), the

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) prepared a 34-page evaluation of health claims to provide the BATF a policy foundation on which to base its rejections of any alcohol beverage industry publicity which connected the beneficial health effects of moderate consumption of alcohol. The document was based on reviews of only 23 of the more than 400 responses to the BATF's Federal Register notice of March 8, 1991, which sought comment on whether alcohol health warning labels should be amended.

The evaluation of health claims was made by a nine-member panel which included only a single physician. As with many of the federal government's alcohol-control panels, this one mostly lacks the presence of physicians and true scientists trained to interpret scientific studies and instead is stacked with social science or liberal arts degrees whose training in the rigors of the scientific method and interpreting medical research is not as intensive.

As listed in the NIAAA document, the panel consisted of:

-- Charles Atkin, Ph.D., Professor of Communications and Telecommunications, Department of Communications, Michigan State University;

-- Vicki S. Freimuth, Ph.D., Professor of Communication, Department of Speech Communications, University of Maryland;

-- Anthony Garro, Ph.D., Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, New Jersey Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey;

-- James D. Beard, Ph.D., Professor and Director of Psychiatry, Alcohol Research Center, Memphis Mental Health Institute, University of Tennessee;

-- Howard Blane, Ph.D., Research Institute on Alcoholism, Buffalo, N.Y.;

-- Nancy Day, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Epidemiology and Pediatrics, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh;

-- Harold Kalant, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Pharmacology, University of Toronto;

-- Julie Buring, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and

-- Arthur Klatsky, M.D., Chief, Cardiovascular Division, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Oakland, Calif.

A spokesman from the NIAAA said that responses from each of the panel members were "synthesized" into the material in the report, but that synthesized material was not resubmitted to panel members.

The NIAAA document analyzed the 23 responses sent to it by BATF and combined them into nine categories for comment:

-- Cardiovascular disease

-- Moderation

-- Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

-- Cancer

-- Unique properties of wine

-- New risks

-- Specific label messages

-- Label design and

-- Label effectiveness.

It may be instructive for you to compare the NIAAA's assessments with the corresponding chapters in this book, including the one on evaluating research results.

Cardiovascular Disease

Any protective effects from moderate consumption, said this section of the NIAAA document, "has not yet been definitively established." This section referenced only three of the more than 15 studies conducted in 1990 and 1991, all of which confirmed the cardio-protective effects of moderate consumption. This section seemed to imply that the three studies referenced were the only studies on the subject. In addition, most of the referenced studies supporting the viewpoint that more research was needed were much older; many have been disproved by more current research.

For example, this section of the NIAAA report cited the criticism that the abstainer population contains many unhealthy people or former alcoholics who do not drink because of health reasons. NIAAA does cite three studies which have disproved this criticism, but it fails to mention that every study since 1988 has corrected for this potential problem and has found the criticism without basis. Despite the body of scientific knowledge, this section treats the criticism as if it were still a valid point of scientific question.

Moderation

Commenting on the benefits of moderate consumption, the paper repeated itself, saying that "potential benefits of alcohol/wine on cardiovascular status have not as yet been definitively established. Moreover, tradeoffs in terms of potential detrimental effects must be considered in relation to potential benefits."

The preliminary studies it cited in support of this position were all in various alcoholism journals where, as respected alcohol abuse pioneer Selden Bacon points out, the scientific standards tend to be lower than those in respected medical and scientific journals. Responding to industry requests to change warning labels to warn of excessive consumption, the report concludes that, "'moderate use may be beneficial to your health' is not correct for all people."

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

The document recommends abstinence for pregnant woman because "it has not been established that only excessive amounts of alcohol cause other damage to the fetus."

This section failed to acknowledge the overwhelming body of scientific research which has found no link between moderate alcohol consumption and fetal injury.

Cancer

This section dismissed as irrelevant the presence of anticancer compounds such as quercetin which is contained in wine. While conceding in one part of this section that, "Alcohol has not been proven to be directly, independently carcinogenic for any site," it goes on to state, unequivocally that, "alcohol consumption increases the risk of cancers of the upper alimentary tract and upper respiratory tract." While some research does exist supporting this contention, this section does not mention that many experts and much research exists that emphatically disagrees. This section also doesn't acknowledge that the studies in support of the wine/cancer association have been attacked as sloppy or methodologically flawed.

Unique properties of wine

"There are no specific scientific data to support claims that moderate wine consumption differs from consumption of other alcoholic beverages in terms of potential risks or benefits."

This section does not not mention that, while no conclusive proof exists of any additional benefits of wine over other beverages, most of the studies which have separately studied wine, beer and spirits drinkers have suggested that wine may indeed have unique advantages.

The study group said it could not comment on the assertion that wine was connected with only 2 percent of drunk driving cases because it was unable to locate the study. It took this reporter only two long-distance telephone calls to the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. to determine that the document in question was the Bureau of Justice Statistics publication "Special Report: Drunk Driving" #NCJ-1O9945, February, 1988.

This example was typical of the study as a whole. Research which did not support NIAAA policy was either ignored or, where it fell short in a citation, no effort was made to locate the reference. On the other hand, the report evidenced the panel's energy in searching for citations to support control-group positions, including numerous citations of unpublished, non-peer-reviewed and preliminary work which was accorded the same degree of respect and space in the report as studies which had appeared in reputable medical and scientific journals. Most of these unpublished references were funded by the NIAAA.

According to Selden Bacon, "Utilizing friends', supporters' and patrons' assertions as independent evidence to support their own programs has been a common practice in the alcohol programs of the past 100 years. The process takes on rather frightening overtones when government agencies control not only their own action policies, but also the so-called independent research." [emphasis added].

New risks

This section concluded that no new risks from drinking alcoholic beverages had been identified since warning labels went into effect in 1988.

Specific label messages, design & effectiveness

This section concludes that it has no compelling data to recommend changing current warning labels or to add new ones. Having said that, the report devotes five pages of discussion to changing the labels, citing: "NIAAA-funded... promising but unpublished results... an unsubmitted manuscript... quite promising unpublished results," and a Department of Health and Human Services report "advocating" rotating warning labels.