Learning about alcohol and from Nuremberg

doi:10.1136/bmj.314.7078.0

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Alcohol flows through this BMJ as it has flowed through medicine for well over a thousand years. Minerva quotes from the physicians' health study from the United States and shows that the lowest relative risk of death in more than 22 000 male doctors was among those who drank 5-6 units of alcohol a week (p 452). The highest risk was among those drinking two or more units a day. The gap between risk and benefit is narrow, and, as always, the problem is to know where the pleasure and the benefits end …