In this debate published by the New England Journal of Medicine (click on the hot keys in the header) we can see pure junk science at work.
So, a study is made on 22,071 male physicians to establish whether moderate alcohol intake is good for your health or not. After the costly exercise, we read:
"Several studies have shown U- or J-shaped relations between alcohol consumption and the risk of stroke. […] During an average of 12.2 years of follow-up, 679 strokes were reported. As compared with participants who had less than one drink per week, those who drank more had a reduced overall risk of stroke (relative risk, 0.79; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.66 to 0.94) and a reduced risk of ischemic stroke (relative risk, 0.77; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.63 to 0.94). There was no statistically significant association between alcohol consumption and hemorrhagic stroke. The overall relative risks of stroke for the men who had one drink per week, two to four drinks per week, five or six drinks per week, or one or more drinks per day were 0.78 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.59 to 1.04), 0.75 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.58 to 0.96), 0.83 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.62 to 1.11), and 0.80 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.64 to 0.99), respectively, in an analysis in which we controlled for major risk factors for stroke."
Nice babble. Imagine the effect of it when put under the nose of a politician! Since stroke has a large amount of concomitant causes - and we are talking about infinitesimal variations of a
tiny risk factor to begin with - and considering the actual
practical impossibility to control (keep into account and remove from the statistic) the factors concomitant to the phenomenon analysed, the study wants to quantify whether an additional single grain of sand in the beach may or may not stop the incoming tide. To boot, consider that most epidemiological studies are based on self-reporting (sometimes second or even third hand reporting), causing
immense distortions of reality. This is particularly true of tobacco-related epidemilogical "studies".
Differently than what happens for tobacco, however, scientific debate on alcohol is not yet silenced in order to make it appear as if there is not dissent. So another scientist replies:
"Cerebrovascular disease accounts for a substantial worldwide burden of death and disability. In addition to well-established risk factors such as hypertension, myocardial infarction, diabetes mellitus, and smoking, [of course!]
an increasing body of evidence suggests that lifestyle factors contribute to the risk of stroke."
Then he concludes: "Finally, when advising patients about the prevention of cardiovascular disease and stroke, physicians must consider not only alcohol consumption, but also a host of other important risk factors, including hypertension, cigarette smoking [of course!], diabetes, body weight, physical activity, and abnormalities of blood lipids."
The only thing that these kind of debates really show is the obsessive compulsion of the health establishment to quantify even the smallest bits of the not quantifiable, the endless and useless discussions about the specific incidence of just ONE component among hundreds, and the pea-brained insistence in the attempt to isolate one combination among
billions of possible ones. All that, of course, results in a continuous stream of conflicting information to the general public which fortunately is developing a healthy amount of indifference about all health warnings. But more importantly, these debates tell us about the degeneration of epidemiology -- a science that is reliable only when there is just ONE cause and ONE effect.
Having spent most of my life in the engineering field, I know that the best way to keep an obtuse technician busy is to replace his instrument that was scaled 1 to 10,000 with one that is scaled 1 to 10. While the technician would shrug his shoulders at a read-out of 10 in the 1 to 10,000-scaled instrument, the same imbecile would get all excited, and spend the rest of his life in worrying about the
same read-out on the 1 to 10 instrument just because the needle is at the end of the scale! Such is the great stupidity (and dishonesty) of today's health cartel.
Today's epidemiology (and most of the "environmental science" used by environmental activists) is the klondike of the junk scientists and the graveyard of personal liberties, lifestyles, business, and trust in science. Corrupt and obtuse politicians, pushed by unscrupulous lobby groups with a specific agenda, use this kind of junk science to make policies that affect the wallet and restrict the lives of all while bringing the social economic burden beyond safety limits.
Epidemiology has become the way for those without vision or intelligence -- but with a
"Ph.D" in front of their names -- to make money and become well-known while quantifying ever-smaller bits of trivia.
Here is a bit of REAL health information that is NOT epidemiological, and it is of universal application:
