The New York Times :: “The Battle Over What to Tell Americans About Drinking”

“The Battle Over What to Tell Americans About Drinking”

January 1st, 2025, by Roni Caryn Rabin

Dr. Catena’s Response:

The New York Times’ War on Moderate Alcohol Consumption

The latest salvo in the New York Times’ war on moderate alcohol consumption came New Year’s Day, with The Battle Over What to Tell Americans About Drinking by reporter Roni Caryn Rabin.

The New York Times didn’t cover the release of the report on alcohol and health when it was first issued on December 17, 2024, by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine (NASEM). To cover the NASEM report as news would have meant announcing the finding of an “association between moderate consumption of alcohol and lower all-cause mortality.”

Instead, the New York Times ran Rabin’s piece, weeks later, labeled as “news analysis.”

It’s important to understand what the NASEM report actually says, which wasn’t clear in the Times story. NASEM Committee findings about Moderate Alcohol Consumption and Health

The report of the committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, titled “Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health” includes Conclusion 3-1, which states, with “moderate certainty”:

“Based on data from the eight eligible studies from 2019 to 2023, the committee concludes that compared with never consuming alcohol, moderate consumption is associated with lower all-cause mortality.” 

This affirms the J-curve association of lower mortality in moderate drinkers, found in most alcohol studies over the last few decades.  As a female moderate wine drinker, I find these three associations particularly profound and life-changing:

“a 23% lower risk of all-cause mortality was found among females who consumed moderate amounts of alcohol compared with females who never consumed alcohol.”

“a 10% higher risk of breast cancer among persons consuming moderate amounts of alcohol compared with persons never consuming alcohol.”

“a 22% lower risk of heart attack and 11% lower risk of stroke among persons consuming moderate amounts of alcohol compared with persons never consuming alcohol.”

Yet in her NY Times story, Ms. Rabin criticizes the esteemed panel of the National Academies for “after a year of study” finding sufficient evidence to draw “only three conclusions with some certainty.” Would she have preferred they find a way to squeeze out a few more conclusions, the data be damned?

No evidence of bias in the NASEM committee

In her article, Ms. Rabin asserts that members of the NASEM committee received funding from the alcohol industry. The NASEM panel includes professors from leading universities such as the Colorado School of Public Health, Harvard, Cornell, Brown, University of Idaho, Johns Hopkins, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Iowa, and Stanford, among others. There is no evidence of industry having had influence over these researchers. To impugn their integrity without evidence is defamatory.

In a previous article, Ms. Rabin criticized one of the NASEM committee members for being a speaker at a Beer and Health Symposium. I ask: Should doctors with knowledge of alcohol’s health effects not accept speaking invitations to alcohol industry conferences? Who then will educate the alcohol industry on this important topic?

The World Health Organization (WHO) guide for journalists references a 2020 analysis of alcohol industry funding for alcohol and health research that was unable to find bias. That analysis of 386 observational studies showed that only 5% of studies were funded by the alcohol industry, and they found no bias in outcome related to funding source. 

NYT stories consistently rely on same biased sources

The January 1st, 2025 story relies on the unsupported opinions of the same anti-alcohol activists whom the Times turns to again and again. The story is rife with innuendo and allegations unsupported by evidence – mostly opinions from those with an anti-alcohol policy axe to grind. Even more appalling is the way the story questions the integrity of the NASEM process and the committee members.

Let’s break it down, shall we?

Ms. Rabin asserts that “many scientists now take issue with the view…that moderate drinking is linked to fewer heart attack and stroke deaths, and fewer deaths overall, compared with never drinking.”

While she doesn’t present the results of a survey of relevant scientists to back the notion that “many” scientists support her assertion, she presents the views of Diane Riibe, co-founder of a nonprofit focused on the harms of alcohol, and of Dr. Tim Stockwell.

This isn’t the first time a New York Times story has given heavy weight to anti-alcohol activists. In fact, six New York Times stories on alcohol and health over the last two years have cited as main sources either Dr. Tim Stockwell or Dr. Tim Naimi. 

Both Drs. Stockwell and Naimi have acknowledged in a report to have received funds from IOGT-NTO, the International Organization of Good Templars, which works to promote total abstinence from alcohol. It has since rebranded as “Movendi.” Stockwell reviewed the NASEM report, a fact not disclosed in the January 1st, 2025 New York Times article or in any other of the stories where he is quoted. 

Why does the NYT ignore The Lancet on cardiovascular health?

I have written several letters to editors at the New York Times pointing out that The Lancet (the highest impact factor medical journal in the world) stated in a 2022 publication of the 2020 Global Burden of Disease study that “Consuming a small amount of alcohol for people over age 40 can provide some health benefits, such as reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, and diabetes.”

Yet, in her January 1st, 2025 NYT story, Ms. Rabin appears to dismiss my statement about “salutary cardiovascular effects” as self-serving. I will always take issue with the New York Times favoring the opinion of anti-alcohol financed groups and Canada-based scientists who have worked for a prohibitionist organization over a publication by The Lancet and a report by leading U.S. professors commissioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. 

Misrepresenting the “Canadian guidelines” controversy

Furthermore, for the last two years and in multiple stories, the New York Times has misrepresented the “2 days a week low-risk drinking guidelines” by the Stockwell/Naimi affiliated NGO — “Canadian Center on Substance Use and Addiction” — as official “Canadian health authority” alcohol recommendations. These guidelines were never adopted by the Canadian government. While some individual government resources used the research, it has been scrubbed from government sites, as you can see in an archived version here and the current version, from which the hyperlink to the research was removed, here. 

The New York Times’ repeated statement that the “Canadian health authorities…have signed on to the idea that there’s no safe level of drinking” is misguiding the U.S. public. The Canadian government website provides the following guidelines:

The guidelines for consumption limits

Women:

• limit alcohol to no more than:
  • 2 standard drinks per day
  • 10 standard drinks per week
  • 3 standard drinks on special occasions
• avoid drinking alcohol on some days

Men:

• limit alcohol to no more than:
  • 3 standard drinks per day
  • 15 standard drinks per week
  • 4 standard drinks on special occasions
• avoid drinking alcohol on some days

Stockwell criticism of NASEM’s restrictive criteria unfounded

In Ms. Rabin’s January 1st New York Times article, Dr. Tim Stockwell (he has a Ph.D. in psychology) is quoted, criticizing the NASEM report for using “very restrictive criteria in selecting studies for review.”  Yet Stockwell’s frequent past criticisms of existing alcohol and health metanalyses have been primarily focused on their inclusion of potential “sick quitters” or “ex-heavy alcohol drinkers” in their control group. The NASEM report editor agrees with Stockwell on this point, and therefore I find Stockwell’s criticism that the NASEM panel “used very restrictive criteria in selecting studies for review” to be unfounded.  

The NASEM preface states: “the comparison group used in alcohol studies has been identified as a major source of bias. This is because categories of “non-drinkers” often include former drinkers who may have stopped drinking for health reasons including Alcohol Use Disorder.” 

And this is why the NASEM “Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health” group specifically included studies where non-drinker control groups only included never-drinkers. 

A publication of the stature of the New York Times should ask for an independent review of the NASEM report by a statistics-trained journalist or a research scientist before criticizing the NASEM report based on comments by anti-alcohol groups.  

Waiting for the Repurposed ICCPUD Committee (Prevention of Underage Drinking) Report to Surface

After denigrating observational data (the only kind of existing data we have for alcohol and health because a large randomized controlled study that could prove causality has not been conducted), Ms. Rabin points out that an upcoming government report from ICCPUD — Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (a body that is supposed to be focused on underage drinking) “is expected to focus on health outcomes known to be caused by alcohol, not merely associated with it.”

What she must mean by this is likely to be data on drunk driving, where direct causality can be assigned. This kind of data has never been included in the Dietary Guidelines, and I am not sure why it would be, given that drunk driving is illegal and not an issue related to the diet of Americans.  

It is not possible for the current data to “focus on health outcomes” known to be caused by moderate alcohol consumption.

The need for a large, randomized controlled study – shut down by The New York Times

No current study will be able to gather better data on the health effects of moderate alcohol consumption than the observational data reviewed by NASEM, because a large randomized controlled study on moderate alcohol and health has not been conducted, as Ms. Rabin well knows because she has claimed credit for the New York Times having played a role in shutting down what was to be the first international randomized controlled study of the effects of alcohol and health. 

The MACH Trial (Moderate Alcohol and Cardiovascular Health Trial) had been approved by the NIH – National Institutes of Health —ethics committee. An NIH foundation for research funded in part by alcohol industry was to fund the study, with systems put in place for scientific independence.  

During an investigation, an NIH staff member was found at fault for directly soliciting industry funds, but none of the scientists were found to be at fault (The New York Times wrongly accused Dr. Ken Mukamal of the same). The study was cancelled. Consider that most pharmaceutical trials receive funding from the pharmaceutical industry and are at the core of advances in medical treatments. 

I have spoken to many doctors and scientists interested in the topic of alcohol and health who think that a randomized controlled study (such as the now defunct MACH Trial) should be conducted urgently because the more than half of Americans who consume alcohol deserve definitive answers to their questions about alcohol and health. 

Is the NYT trying to influence the upcoming 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines for Americans with an anti-moderate alcohol consumption bias?

The final sentence of Rabin’s story makes me wonder whether she has actually read the guidelines: “And that may set the stage for dietary guidelines that say something truly new: Drink less.” 

The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans state:

“Adults of legal drinking age can choose not to drink or to drink in moderation by limiting intake to 2 drinks or less in a day for men and 1 drink or less in a day for women, when alcohol is consumed. Drinking less is better for health than drinking more.”

Ms. Rabin repeatedly criticizes the alcohol industry for “pointing to the official recommendations.” Has Ms. Rabin taken the time to read the 2020-25 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which advise Americans to “drink less?”

The New York Times should not allow its writers to fabricate bias on the part of one party, yet turn a blind eye to the bias of anti-alcohol groups. As a New York Times reader, I expect the paper to assign a journalist trained in medical research to review data and report on it —accurately, without bias.

The secretive six-member ICCPUD panel (Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking) has been repurposed to review Dietary Guidelines for Americans by Dr. Koob, Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism – without the approval of the U.S. Congress. ICCPUD is made up of six scientists who are all known for their anti-alcohol positions. Three of them are based outside of the US. A group of bipartisan congress members have asked for the committee to be investigated because its work is duplicative of the Congress-appointed NASEM Committee and because its minutes, member selection process, disclosures, alleged conflicts of interest and role in advising Dietary Guidelines for Americans have not been shared with the U.S. Congress Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services.  

It’s my hope that when the ICCPUD alcohol report comes out, reporters at the New York Times and elsewhere will look closely at the bias and conflicts of interest of some members of that panel.