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Study: No "Safe" Level of Alcohol Consumption

posted by chromas on Saturday August 25 2018, @04:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the this-news-is-terrible-and-I'm-gonna-need-a-drink dept.

takyon writes:

No alcohol safe to drink, global study confirms

A large new global study published in the Lancet has confirmed previous research which has shown that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. The researchers admit moderate drinking may protect against heart disease but found that the risk of cancer and other diseases outweighs these protections. A study author said its findings were the most significant to date because of the range of factors considered.

The Global Burden of Disease [open, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31310-2] [DX] study looked at levels of alcohol use and its health effects in 195 countries, including the UK, between 1990 and 2016.

Analysing data from 15 to 95-year-olds, the researchers compared people who did not drink at all with those who had one alcoholic drink a day. They found that out of 100,000 non-drinkers, 914 would develop an alcohol-related health problem such as cancer or suffer an injury. But an extra four people would be affected if they drank one alcoholic drink a day. For people who had two alcoholic drinks a day, 63 more developed a condition within a year and for those who consumed five drinks every day, there was an increase of 338 people, who developed a health problem.

One of the study authors, Prof Sonia Saxena, a researcher at Imperial College London and a practising GP, said: "One drink a day does represent a small increased risk, but adjust that to the UK population as a whole and it represents a far bigger number, and most people are not drinking just one drink a day."

Related: The Truth We Won't Admit: Drinking is Healthy
Study Shows 3 Drinks a Day May Cause Liver Cancer
Even Moderate Drinking Linked to a Decline in Brain Health
American Society of Clinical Oncology: Alcohol Use Increases Risk of Cancer

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday August 25 2018, @04:52PM (9 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Saturday August 25 2018, @04:52PM (#726258) Journal
    That's right. There's no safe limit for alcohol. Or driving. Or crossing the street. Or talking to your friends/neighbors/co-workers.

    It's not safe to leave the house. It's also not safe to stay home.

    Life is unsafe, it leads certainly to death.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @05:24PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @05:24PM (#726264)

    Brought to you by the same people who didnt believe babys felt pain until the 1990s and so did brain surgery on my friend without anesthesia.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:48PM (7 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:48PM (#726297)

      That's a pretty ignorant way of putting it. It's standard practice to just use a topical anesthetic when performing brain surgery as the surgeon has to have the patient awake and functioning during the procedure to reduce the risk of complications. And the brain itself doesn't feel pain anyways as there are no nerves inside the brain to sense pain.

      In the case of babies, it is very tough to determine the amount that's necessary without being too much as there's no way of conducting the research into the matter.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:18PM (6 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:18PM (#726314)

        In the case of babies, it is very tough to determine the amount that's necessary without being too much as there's no way of conducting the research into the matter.

        Yep, that doesnt mean you can conclude babies don't feel pain though. Thats what they did... until some mom found out on accident and made a fuss about it. Then all of a sudden papers got published showing babies did feel pain.

        • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:29PM (5 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:29PM (#726317)

          To the Editor:
          Dr. John Scanlon spoke at a recent meeting
          sponsored by BIRTH protesting the barbarism of
          surgery without anesthesia for newborn babies and
          has written on the subject ( I ) .

          Ten years ago our prematurely born son,
          Edward, was shunted for hydrocephalus while paralyzed
          with curare. Although he could not move,
          cry, or react in any way, he could see, hear, and feel
          as large incisions were cut in his scalp, neck, and
          abdomen; as a hole was drilled in his skull; as a tube
          was inserted into the center of his brain, then
          pushed down under the skin of his neck, chest, and
          abdomen and implanted deep in his abdominal cavity.
          It is a source of great anguish to me that my
          husband and I signed a form allowing such an operation
          to take place, but we were told Edward might
          die or become brain damaged without the operation
          and that anesthesia might kill him. “Besides,” the
          doctors assured us, “these babies don’t really feel
          pain.” I suspected then, and now know, that this is
          just not true.

          To this day, our severely retarded son will allow
          no one to touch his head, neck, or abdomen. Even
          heavily tranquilized, he reacts to the simplest medical
          procedures or the mere sight of the hospital with
          violent trembling, profuse sweating, screaming,
          struggling, and vomiting. I can’t help feeling that on
          some level he still remembers the hideous pain inflicted
          on him during his unanesthetized surgery and
          throughout the course of his neonatal intensive
          care.

          Shortly after Edward came home from the hospital,
          I began work on a book for parents of premature
          babies. Several doctors and nurses I interviewed
          admitted that surgery without painkillers was sometimes
          necessary for those babies “too weak to survive
          anesthesia.” However, the majority of parents
          I interviewed seemed unaware of this practice. AIthough
          I now regret it, I decided against mentioning
          surgery without anesthesia in my book. At the time,
          I was unable to document its occurrence or determine
          its extent, and I was concerned about upsetting
          parents, perhaps needlessly. In any event, what
          could parents do with this information? One mother
          I spoke with who realized anesthesia would not be
          used for her daughter’s surgery refused to sign the
          consent form. The operation was performed anyway
          and the mother was reported to local authorities
          as an abusive parent.
          Since the publication of my book in 1983, I have
          learned that premature infants are commonly subjected
          to major surgery and other excruciating procedures
          without any pain relief whatsoever, and
          that the reasons used to justify these practices are
          of dubious validity.

          Other parents are also finding out what was done
          to their children and they are outraged. At the 1985
          national conference of Parents of Premature and
          High-Risk Infants, I joined a group of mothers and
          fathers who were discussing their children’s painful
          NICU care: major surgery, chest tube insertions,
          cutdowns (all performed without painkillers); gangrene
          and amputations from infiltrated IVs; bones
          broken during chest physiotherapy; skin pulled off
          with adhesive tape; burns from the monitors; 24-
          hour-a-day bombardment with bright light and loud
          noise; and numerous iatrogenic afflictions from improperly
          evaluated therapies. “If this were going on
          in any other setting,” one mother exclaimed, “it
          would be called torture!” Another parent noted the
          similarity between the aversive behavior of some
          NICU babies and the psychologic problems of adult
          torture victims. Another added that if these procedures
          were carried out on kittens and puppies instead
          of human babies, antivivisectionists would
          close down the nurseries. None of us believed that
          we had been adequately informed about the immediate
          or long-term suffering our children would endure.
          Most of us doubted that we would consent to
          such medical ordeals to save our own lives.
          In the past two decades, a great deal has been
          written about parents as abusers of their premature
          babies. The time has now come for a long, hard look
          at the medical abuse of newborns, especially of
          those babies unfortunate enough to be born prematurely.

          Lawson, J. R. (1986). LETTERS. Birth, 13(2), 124–125. doi:10.1111/j.1523-536x.1986.tb01024.x

          To the Editor:
          Imagine that your baby needs major surgery.
          You admit him to a major teaching facility with a
          solid reputation. Feeling foolish for even asking,
          you question several doctors about anesthesia. The
          surgical resident who brings you consent forms
          promises your baby will be put to sleep, and you
          sign. Imagine finding out later that your son was cut
          open with no anesthesia at all.

          This is not a cut-and-slice horror movie. This is
          my life; the hospital is Children’s Hospital National
          Medical Center; and, as I have since discovered, it
          is a common practice at Children’s and elsewhere.
          My son, Jeffrey, was a very tiny, very sick premature
          baby, born Feb. 9, 1985, at a gestational age
          of 25-26 weeks. During the almost two months of
          his life, he was on a respirator, with several lung
          diseases, a heart problem, kidney problems, and a
          brain bleed. He sometimes became unstable and difficult
          to manage clinically. In the United States each
          year, thousands of preemies with identical medical
          profiles are born and kept alive, and many of them
          have the same surgery.

          Jeffrey had holes cut on both sides of his neck,
          another hole cut in his right chest, an incision from
          his breastbone around to his backbone, his ribs
          pried apart, and an extra artery near his heart tied
          off. This was topped off with another hole cut in his
          left side for a chest tube. The operation lasted 12
          hours. Jeffrey was awake through it all. The anesthesiologist
          paralyzed him with Pavulon, a curare
          drug that left him unable to move, but total1-v c o n
          scious.

          When I questioned the anesthesiologist later
          about her use of Pavulon, she said Jeffrey was too
          sick to tolerate powerful anesthetics. Anyway, she
          said, it had never been demonstrated to her that
          premature babies feel pain. She seemed sincerely
          puzzled as to why I was concerned. It turns out that
          such care, or lack thereof, is possible because, as a
          neonatologist explained, babies, unlike adults,
          don’t go into shock no matter how much agony they
          suffer. Anesthesiologists take advantage of this,
          coupled with the patient’s inability to complain.
          Many surgeons who perform this operation on
          preemies (including Jeffrey’s surgeon) are not
          aware that he or she is operating without anesthesia.
          Yet I have found references to it in three articles
          in medical journals. John Scanlon, a neonatologist,
          wrote a newspaper article about a similar case
          and received feedback from other doctors uneasy
          about the same lack of pain control at their hospitals.
          The head of a national group of bereaved parents
          was upset by Jeffrey’s story and questioned the
          nurses at the intensive care nursery in her own hospital.
          The nurses confirmed that many doctors believe
          that preemies don’t feel pain and act accordingly.
          A nurse in a local intensive care nursery told me
          that she sometimes has to nag surgeons to use anesthesia
          and gets ridiculed for her efforts. The nurse
          assured me, as did two of the three medical journal
          articles, that sodium pentathol can be used to anesthetize
          all preemies no matter how small and ill.
          I have tried to convince medical authorities to
          take steps to prevent such abuse of other babies.
          But the Washington, D.C., Medical Society reviewed
          the case and concluded that, though there is
          significant controversy among physicians and in
          medical literature about pain and premature infants,
          they support the anesthesiologist. The Washington,
          D.C., Commission on Licensure to Practice the
          Healing Arts is also studying the case. But the anesthesiologist
          evidently followed the standards of
          practice, so she will inevitably be exonerated.
          An attorney with whom I consulted thought
          there was little money in the case and was reluctant
          to take me as a client. He thought we could win, but
          his experience was that juries don’t perceive premature
          babies as quite human. Staff at the federal
          hotline set up after the Baby Jane Doe case, whose
          avowed purpose includes investigating inhumane
          medical practices, were not interested once they
          learned the infant was dead. Likewise for the Washington,
          D.C., Child Protective Services Agency.
          The head of the American Association of Anesthesiologists,
          while calling my letter “certainly the
          most unusual I have received,” said he is powerless
          to respond. The American Board of Anesthesiology
          said that such cases are none of its business.
          I’m convinced that Jeffrey was paralyzed for the
          convenience of the surgeon. Once paralyzed, he
          couldn’t distress the operating team by demonstrating
          his pain, so they didn’t give it any further
          thought.

          For our pets there are protective organizations
          and dedicated proponents to guard against surgery
          without anesthesia. There appear to be none for
          premature babies. There should be, because they
          scream as loud as we do.

          Harrison, H. (1986). LETTERS. Birth, 13(2), 124–124. doi:10.1111/j.1523-536x.1986.tb01023.x

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @11:54PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @11:54PM (#726400)

            This is references for the prior posts, so either they should all or none be offtopic.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @06:22AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @06:22AM (#726457)

              Use <spoiler>text</spoiler> next time.

              text
              text
              text
              text

              text

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 26 2018, @11:36AM (2 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 26 2018, @11:36AM (#726514) Journal
            The weird thing about your story is that there's no reason for concern there. You describe surgeons doing a good job. For example:

            When I questioned the anesthesiologist later about her use of Pavulon, she said Jeffrey was too sick to tolerate powerful anesthetics.

            Ok.

            But the Washington, D.C., Medical Society reviewed the case and concluded that, though there is significant controversy among physicians and in medical literature about pain and premature infants, they support the anesthesiologist.

            Ok.

            I’m convinced that Jeffrey was paralyzed for the convenience of the surgeon.

            Which let us note was the guy keeping Jeffrey alive. That surgeon needs those conveniences in order to do the job.

            In summary, too bad you and Jeffrey had a lot of bad luck. Blaming surgeons for it though is a waste of your time and money.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @03:33PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @03:33PM (#726574)

              You just ignored the entire point of those letters, which is the doctors came to the conclusion that babies dont feel pain because it was hard to observe it and that was the most convenient interpretation for them.

              Also, they are letters to the journal "Birth" from 1986, reflecting the medical establishment's position at the time. You can see they were so confident babies dont feel pain that one mom got reported for being abusive for not allowing a surgery without anesthesia. There is a long history of very confident and horribly wrong pronouncements from the healthcare industry.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 28 2018, @10:28PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 28 2018, @10:28PM (#727526) Journal

                You just ignored the entire point of those letters, which is the doctors came to the conclusion that babies dont feel pain because it was hard to observe it and that was the most convenient interpretation for them.

                If that were the point to the letter, then it's not much of a point. We already know medicine is very, very imperfect. I think however the real point was that the author of the letter felt the need to publicly blame others for misfortunes that were beyond anyone. Whether or not Jeffrey felt pain was irrelevant to the primary outcomes - that Jeffrey was alive and that he was retarded. Many of our medical procedures cause permanent damage when successfully performed. Perhaps instead it would be better to let Jeffrey die than to perform an imperfect medical procedure by imperfect people? I leave that up to you to decide.