By RONI CARYN RABIN
© 2017 New York Times News Service
It may be the most palatable advice you will ever get from a doctor: Have a glass of wine, a beer or a cocktail every day, and you just might prevent a heart attack and live longer.
Now the National Institutes of Health is starting a $100 million clinical trial to test for the first time whether a drink a day really does prevent heart attacks. And guess who is picking up most of the tab?
Five companies that are among the world’s largest alcoholic beverage manufacturers — Anheuser-Busch InBev, Heineken, Diageo, Pernod Ricard and Carlsberg — have so far pledged $67.7 million to a foundation that raises money for the National Institutes of Health, said Margaret Murray, the director of the Global Alcohol Research Program at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which will oversee the study.
The decision to let the alcohol industry pay the bulk of the cost has raised concern among researchers who track influence-peddling in science.
“Research shows that industry-sponsored research almost invariably favors the interests of the industry sponsor, even when investigators believe they are immune from such influence,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University who is the author of several books on the topic.
The principal investigator of the new study, Dr. Kenneth J. Mukamal, a Harvard associate professor of medicine and a visiting scientist at the school of public health, said he has never received funding from the industry. Mukamal, who has published dozens of papers on the health benefits of alcohol consumption, said he was not aware that alcohol companies were supporting the trial financially.
“This isn’t anything other than a good old-fashioned NIH trial,” he said. “We have had literally no contact with anyone in the alcohol industry in the planning of this.”
