[Someone]

Alcohol isn’t healthy, but other things aren’t either, so why warn for alcohol usage? Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. Chances are that applies to all other things you mention, too.

Also, FTA: “moderate alcohol consumption has been linked to an approximate 30 to 50 per cent increased risk of breast cancer”. Even if the real number is only 5%, that doesn’t look like “only looking for drugs that have minor effect” to me.

[rapjr9]

The absolute number is probably closer to 5%, so yes there is an effect and it increases harm some. As you say I wanted to see them also mention the context in terms of how that harm stacks up against all the other causes of cancer and why this particular harm, which is fairly small, is worth singling out when there seems to be no issue with other harms of a similar magnitude. The "only looking for drugs that have minor effect" was more of a broadside rant, saying that a lot of medical research does indeed just look for marketable drugs and doesn't address root causes of disease. That is in part because grad students do a lot of the research and they need to graduate on time so they pick easier research problems. Certainly there is some good research going on, I've been involved in some medically related research myself on human behavior change using wearable devices. I guess what irks me here is that the article seems more like propaganda than a true assessment of harm and risk. The use of relative risk numbers rather than absolute risk, the alarm, the ignoring of other factors that are also relevant, and the lack of any showing that their solution would do any good. So they have come up with a solution that probably would only have minor effect, they haven't studied the impact of their solution and what harm it might cause, and their numbers are biased towards sensationalism. Maybe the minor effect would be worth it, but the USA government makes life and death decisions quite often where 5% is treated as a rounding factor so I'm not seeing a cause for alarm here. I can't see this as a reason to start a national campaign to reduce or eliminate all drinking either. What really irks me is that I don't think the NIH will fund much serious research into all the various aspects of alcohol, despite the widespread use. Instead they keep funding behavior change studies, all of which tend to show very minor success. It's similar to obesity, they say "just don't ingest it", but they ignore the addiction, the social aspects, the specific body effects, the biochemistry, and just are not looking to solve the basic problems, instead concentrating on trying to change behavior, which has not worked very well.