An ambitious 10-year study undertaken by the National Institute for Health, which examines whether daily drinking can have positive health effects, is largely funded by the alcohol industry. It raises questions about the integrity of the trial and whether NIH employees broke the agency’s fundraising policies.
A New York Times investigation found that in 2013 and 2014 the NIH sought funding from the world’s top alcohol companies, including Anheuser-Busch InBev, Heineken, Diageo, and Pernod Ricard. The agency also met with the Distilled Spirits Council, the liquor industry’s influential trade association. Scientists’ presentations to those potential funders “strongly [suggested] that the study’s results would endorse moderate drinking as healthy.”
The companies have funneled their funding to the agency through the Foundation for the NIH, a non-governmental organization that raises money for NIH research. The foundation, and representatives from the NIH, insisted to the Times that there is a firewall between funders and the research itself.
Observational studies have long found a correlation between moderate drinking and some positive health effects. But this study could be the first to draw the conclusion that daily drinking may actually create those positive health effects. That finding would of course benefit the world’s leading alcohol manufacturers.
Researchers began recruiting the study’s participants in January. People whose health could be compromised by daily drinking, such as those with a family history of addiction or certain cancers, will be screened out. But the study could still lead those with complicating conditions to believe the study applies to them. As one public health professor put it to the Times, “the way it will be understood by the general public is that this applies to everybody.”
The beer industry has been involved in other political efforts lately, such as navigating Trump’s tariff proposal. The industry could be hit by an aluminum tariff, given that aluminum represents as much as 40 percent of the cost of making a beer can. Beer industry groups were among many rushing to lobby the federal government for exemptions.