Federal Agency Courted Alcohol Industry to Fund Study on Benefits of Moderate Drinking - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/health/nih-alcohol-study-liquor-industry.html
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/03/07/science/00ALCOHOL-promo/00ALCOHOL-promo-facebookJumbo.jpg It was going to be a study that could change the American diet, a huge clinical trial that might well deliver all the medical evidence needed to recommend a daily alcoholic drink as part of a healthy lifestyle.
That was how two prominent scientists and a senior federal health official pitched the project during a presentation at the luxurious Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2014. And the audience members who were being asked to help pay for the $100 million study seemed receptive: They were all liquor company executives.
They also made the industry privy to pertinent details, including a list of clinical sites and investigators who were “already on board,” the size and length of the trial, approximate number of participants, and the fact that they could choose any beverage. By design, no form of alcohol — wine, liquor or beer — would be called out as better than another in the trial.
Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University School of Public Health who was shown slides from the scientists’ presentation at The Breakers by The Times, said the study “is not public health research — it’s marketing.”
“This must have seemed like a dream come true for industry. Of course they would pay for it,” he said. “They’re admitting the trial is designed to provide a justification for moderate drinking. That’s not objective science.”
Whether scientists studying alcohol should accept money from the industry has long been controversial. Many scientists and policymakers have publicly said that any engagement with the alcohol industry undermines the credibility of the research.
In 2016, a group representing hundreds of scientists and policymakers published a statement saying researchers should never accept direct or indirect industry funding, and that “any form of engagement with the alcohol industry may influence the independence, objectivity, integrity and credibility” of the research.
“We know that industry funding not only affects the results of studies but affects the questions that are asked, how the results are analyzed and what the answers are,” said Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a professor of pharmacology at Georgetown University and director of Pharmed Out, a group that researches drug marketing.
If the health effects of moderate drinking are a priority for the N.I.H., she added, “they should fund it themselves.”