Tuesday, January 21, 2014

What is important?

What issues do we consider to be important?  In this regard, consider the mortality due to alcohol and the mortality due to violence.  If you believe the World Health Organization,
http://www.who.int/gho/alcohol/harms_consequences/en/
http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/en/

3.8% of deaths in 2004 were attributable to alcohol (2.5 million people).  In contrast, violence claims 1.4 million lives a year, of which 58% are suicides.  

Then, of course, the use of alcohol contributes to violence.   As Seth Abramson wrote, in the American context,
Alcohol abuse is likely the most common driver of crime. Alcohol was involved in more than half of the domestic violence cases I tried as an attorney.
It would seem that the traditional cultures of India and of the Islamic world that had strong cultural  taboos and even legal sanctions around the use of alcohol had it right.   Why does a Western cultural norm become a global cultural norm?   But put that aside for now.

Why do we talk more about violence than about alcohol?


Comments (10)

Loading... Logging you in...
  • Logged in as
That's very strange. This table indicates alcohol related deaths are only 0.16% - rather low on the priority list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_de...

There is also the widely known fact that except for the highest consumption rates (30 drinks per week or more), alcohol use is anti-correlated with death rate.
2 replies · active 571 weeks ago
WHO has it wrong?

WHO tells us:
Alcohol consumption is estimated to cause from 20% to 50% of cirrhosis of the liver, epilepsy, poisonings, road traffic accidents, violence and several types of cancer.

I think that is what is missing from the Wiki table. E.g., the Wiki table lists liver cirrhosis as responsible for 1.38% of all deaths; 20% of that would be 0.278% (assuming cirrhosis is just as fatal whatever the cause) and that beats 0.16%.
This is an decade-old study, but it says:

Evidence that regular light–to–moderate drinking has a beneficial effect on the cardiovascular system comes from physiological and individual–level epidemiological studies. However, aggregate–level, time–series analyses have failed to confirm this effect. Reasons for the different results for the two kinds of analyses are unknown. The time–series analyses may have been confounded by methodological problems, including a relatively short time period (Rehm and Gmel 2001; see also Hatanaka 1996; Greene 2000; Yaffee 2000). Ecological studies also have general limitations in elucidating causality. In contrast, the individual–level studies are based on stronger methodology. The accompanying sidebar reviews a number of methodological issues relevant to studies of alcohol–related morbidity and mortality.
Here is info on US alcohol and cancer: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk...
Wow, Fox News gets into the game: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/01/15/alcohol-...
Here is more:

Given that over 30 percent of deaths in the United States are attributable to heart disease, making it the nation's leading cause of death, it is not surprising that observational studies show that moderate drinkers have lower overall death rates than do abstainers or heavy drinkers. For example, in an American Cancer Society study of 490,000 adults, death rates among middle-aged and elderly men and women were lowest among people who consumed approximately one drink per day (Thun et al. 1997). In fact, death rates among these moderate drinkers were approximately 20 percent lower than among abstainers. The level of alcohol consumption associated with the lowest overall death rate, however, differed substantially based on the participants' age and risk of heart disease. For example, among participants aged 30–59 years and free of hypertension, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease, the lowest death rate was found with a consumption of less than 1 drink daily. Conversely, among participants aged 60–79 years and with one of these conditions, the lowest death rate occurred with a consumption of three drinks per day.
http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh25-4/25...

i.e., if you are working age and healthy, don't drink. If you are nearing retirement or older and have diabetes, hypertension or coronary heart disease then drink. I think this is a truth the alcohol industry does not want you to know.
Here is what the British say:
http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/check-the-facts/healt...

Research suggests that small amounts of alcohol can have a protective effect on your heart. This benefit appears to be restricted to over 45-year-olds drinking well within the lower risk guidelines.

and

It’s not a good idea to start drinking alcohol to protect yourself against heart disease

Simply put, it’s just not worth it. With alcohol and the heart, it’s a benefit and risk trade off. So, for example, alcohol’s anti-clotting ability, potentially protective against heart attack, may increase the risk of haemorrhagic stroke (when a blood vessel bursts inside the brain), or bleeding within the brain. Beyond the daily unit guidelines, alcohol’s potential benefits on the heart are outweighed by its increased risks of developing other illnesses, such as liver disease or cancer.

There are safer ways to reduce your risk of developing heart disease. To keep your heart healthy, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) advises:

taking exercise
eating a healthy diet
being aware of dangers such as smoking, drinking, high blood pressure and stress.
Here is another source that ranks alcohol as bad but much less so than tobacco, driving, falling, drowning, and a few other things: http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death...

Of course a big question is direct vs indirect effects - i.e., alcohol's effect on violence, accidents, falls, drownings, etc. On the other hand, prohibition has at best a very mixed history.
1 reply · active 571 weeks ago
And here's one to counter that. http://alcalc.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/1/3.f...

It begins thusly:

"The American comedian Henny Youngman (1906–1998) once said, ‘When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.’ Ironic, but interestingly as though with a sense of foresight, he did not speak of giving up drinking! It is despite the fact that alcohol is responsible for increased illness, being causally related to more than 60 different medical conditions (Rehm et al., 2003). Around 4% of the global disease burden is also thought to be alcohol related, which is comparable with that attributed to the effects of tobacco (4.1%) and high blood pressure (4.4%) (Ezzati et al., 2002; WHO, 2002).

For most diseases related to alcohol consumption, a dose–response relationship exists with risk of the disease increasing with greater amounts of alcohol intake, with cardiovascular disease being a possible exception. Apart from being linked to disease, alcohol is also associated with violent crime and aggression under certain circumstances (Room and Rossow, 2001). "

----------------------

Except briefly in modern India, there has never been prohibition. As far as I know, there was a wink-wink-nod-nod about alcohol in Islamic lands. The real disincentive to alcohol was that it was a social solecism.

BTW, the modern fights in the Islamic lands is not about modernism really, but about the acceptance of Western cultural norms. Some people of course, say, the cultural norms come with modernity, but that I don't think is a necessary conclusion. But neither local nor global corporate interests are going to leave let that dog lie with respect to alcohol; profit is too large a motive.
As a wise guy once said, "Nobody ever went out and smoked weed, and then came home and beat up the wife and kids".

Post a new comment

Comments by