Monday, January 10, 2011

Should medical doctors be prescribing wine?

I was disturbed to read these comments from M.D.s in the Stanford Medical Center magazine for alumni- “Too little wine is more harmful than just the right amount..” and “Wine should be considered…a health food in liquid form” (autumn 2010, p.7).

Sure, there is all sorts of indirect evidence suggesting that wine (and other alcoholic drinks) may have benefits, but we’ve seen how lots of indirect evidence doesn’t mean much. Remember being told that hormone replacement therapy was a good idea after menopause? When a double-blinded, placebo-controlled study was finally carried out, surprise, taking hormones turned out to be bad for you!

Let’s hope this won’t be the case for wine, but for now we don’t know. Health practitioners should practice saying “I don’t know- drink a little if you like and don’t drink if you don’t like to”.

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