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reason for anybody to follow your recommendation to go out and start drinking.

Common sense alone invalidates The French Paradox conclusion. In other contexts, a

correlation being misinterpreted to mean that drinking promotes either health or

longevity will be obviously laughable. For example, a researcher who observes that

hospitalized patients don't drink will not conclude that teetotalling causes

hospitalization. Or, a researcher who visits death row and discovers that the inmates

don't drink and do have short life expectancies will not conclude that teetotalling

shortens life. In such examples, anyone with a modicum of common sense instantly

recognizes that a correlation between zero wine intake and either poor health or short

life does not mean that zero wine intake causes either poor health or short life. All

that is required to recognize the invalidity of your conclusion in The French Paradox is

to apply this same common sense to an only slightly more subtle case.

Are there not other studies? Undoubtedly there exist in the literature a large number of

studies that have some less direct bearing on the question that we are discussing, and

many of these studies will be genuine experiments which do permit cause effect

conclusions. I am thinking in particular of experiments that may demonstrate that

ingredients found either in grapes or in wine have a certain physiological effect. With

respect to such other studies, I make the following observations: (1) Your chief

conclusion was based not on such experiments, but on one or more correlational studies.

(2) An experiment in which subjects ingest an ingredient of grapes or of wine may

witness a certain effect, even while actually eating grapes or drinking wine produce a

different or an opposite effect. This could happen because in whole grapes or in real

wine, the ingredient with the beneficial effect could be offset by some other ingredient

which has a harmful effect, as by pesticides or nitrates that might be found in wine, or by the alcohol itself in wine. Unless an experiment actually has subjects drinking

wine, no conclusions concerning drinking wine are possible. (3) An experiment

demonstrating a physiological effect of something ingested is likely to be of short

duration, and is not likely to measure the effect on longevity. However, demonstrating

a physiological effect that appears to be beneficial (say a heightened level of HDL, as

mentioned by Kim Marcus above) is not the same as demonstrating increased longevity,

since the relation between the observed effect and longevity is speculative.

In short, the only research that can prove that prolonged drinking of three to five

glasses of wine per day can extend life is the non-feasible experiment that we have

already discussed above in which subjects are required to drink different amounts of

wine over an extended period of time, and the effects on longevity noted.

The Harm That You May Have Done.

What the above reasoning leads us to, then, is that you were without justification for

promoting the conclusion that you did - that drinking three to five glasses of wine each

day extends life. Quite possibly, your conclusion had the effect of increasing the

consumption of alcoholic beverages, particularly wine, and possibly, the effects of this

increased consumption have been uniformly bad.

These may be among the damaging effects of your advice. The level of alcohol

consumption that you advocate slows reaction times and interferes with coordination and

impairs judgment, and therefore invites accidents. Certainly no airline pilot would be

permitted to consume a fraction of your recommended daily intake and still be allowed to

fly, and certainly every driver should recognize that he is putting himself at risk

drinking as much as you advocate. We recognize the damage that your advice may have

inflicted when we take into account that except for infants and the aging, accidents are

the leading cause of death.

The level of alcohol consumption that you advocate interferes with, or makes quite

impossible, difficult mental work. Thus, a university student who follows your advice

and has a couple of glasses of wine with his dinner is finished for the day - he might

as well head out to a pub after that, because he will find his calculus homework quite

incomprehensible. A chemistry professor who follows your advice and has a couple of

glasses of wine with his lunch will find himself making mistakes as he tries to lay out

the electron configuration of aluminum for his class - he had better find some simpler

topic to treat in that lecture if he doesn't want to embarrass himself in front of his

students. A lawyer arguing a complex case who follows your advice and has a couple of

glasses of wine with his lunch will find himself losing the thread of his argument in

court - he had better let his junior take over that afternoon if he wants to maintain

his reputation.

The level of alcohol consumption that you advocate may damage health. The level of