Despite what the linked article claims, it's still not clear whether alcohol's known cancer risk is outweighed by any health benefits (for example, reducing the risk of stroke/CVD). At least one recent paper concluded that light or moderate alcohol use does reduce overall mortality.

Compared with lifetime abstainers, current infrequent, light, or moderate drinkers were at a lower risk of mortality from all causes [infrequent—hazard ratio: 0.87; 95% confidence interval: 0.84 to 0.90; light: 0.77; 0.75 to 0.79; moderate 0.82; 0.80 to 0.85], CVD, chronic lower respiratory tract diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, and influenza and pneumonia. Also, light or moderate drinkers were associated with lower risk of mortality from diabetes mellitus and nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, or nephrosis. In contrast, heavy drinkers had a significantly higher risk of mortality from all causes, cancer, and accidents (unintentional injuries).

[–] ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

E: Good thing I didn’t put any money into this, as it seems I was wrong about this study.

I am willing to bet that this study is one of the many that interpret the so called J-curve as meaning “moderate use is healthy”. These studies fail to take in consideration that some/many of those who don’t use alcohol at all or use very little, have some kind of medical condition that prevents them from consuming alcohol, but also increases their risk of death. This group of people skews the data to look like a J-curve. Handle this group correctly in the data and you get a straight line.

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

This was a prospective study that looked at lifelong abstainers, not people who gave up drinking. Furthermore, reduced overall mortality was found in light/moderate drinkers even after excluding participants with pre-existing conditions.

That's the correct way to control for the issue you raised.

[–] The_v@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

From a statistical design perspective, that was a really well done analysis.