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Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny.
If you continue to remain silent, the public will continue to judge not only that you
were in the wrong, but that you lack the integrity to admit it as well.
Lubomyr Prytulak
cc: Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike
Wallace.
HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER 653 hits since 05Apr00
Morley Safer Letter 18 05Apr00 Flip side of French drinking
"In 1991, Morley Safer's '60 Minutes' report on the possible heart
protective effects of drinking red wine led to a 44 percent increase
in red wine sales among Americans." - David Jernigan
"While men in Sweden can expect to live 76.5 years on average, a
French man's average lifespan is 74.1 years." - Cardiologist
Michel de Lorgeril
April 05, 2000
Morley Safer
60 Minutes, CBS Television
51 W 52nd Street
New York, NY
USA 10019
Morley Safer:
The weight of scientific evidence contradicts
your French Paradox conclusions
My letter to you of 21Apr99 on the question "Does drinking wine promote longevity?"
demonstrated that your conclusion that drinking 3 to 5 glasses of wine per day promotes
longevity could be seen to be unwarranted from no more than the data that you adduced in
its support. Today, I was astonished to read literature published by the Marin
Institute indicating that research literature that you have failed to bring to public
attention, either in your two French Paradox broadcasts or afterward, reveals that the
bulk of the evidence points to conclusions opposite to the ones that you advocated.
Below, I reproduce excerpts which illustrate the nature of this evidence from two Marin
Institute articles:
The Flip Side of French Drinking
by Hilary Abramson (c) 2000 The Marin Institute
Joh
David Letterman [who is recovering from a quintuple bypass]:
"Drink more red wine."
That's the message Carson left for Letterman while he was in the hospital.
- Associated Press
One of the fathers of the "French Paradox" believes the time has come to "ban" the
expression his research team published in the mid '80s.
One of his countrymen, whose work helped make famous the paradox of having a high
saturated fat diet and lower than expected death rate from heart disease nearly a
decade ago on "60 Minutes," says that attributing a low rate of heart disease to
daily consumption of wine or other forms of alcohol is wrong.
A growing number of French health researchers have news for the rest of the world: It
is myth that the French are healthier than most everyone else because they drink. In
truth, the French are drowning in the grape and paying a hefty price for it.
"There is no scientific consensus today over the protective effect of alcohol," says
Dominique Gillot, France's secretary of state for health. "The link between the
quantity of alcohol consumed and increase of risk of diseases, particularly cancer,
is, on the other hand, scientifically validated."
The fact is that according to data from the world's largest study of heart disease,
conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) during the past decade in 21
countries with 10 million men and women, French heart disease statistics appear to
have been underestimated and the "French Paradox" overestimated. France's rate of
heart disease is actually similar to that of neighboring Italy, Spain, and southern
Germany - lower than many countries in the world, but hardly as remarkable as
reported in the 80s and early 90s.
The French drink one-and-a-half times more per capita than Americans and their death
rate from liver cirrhosis is more than one-and-a-half times greater than that in the
United States. According to WHO, France has the sixth highest adult per capita
alcohol consumption in the world. (The U.S. ranks 32nd.) Alcohol may be involved in
nearly half of the deaths from road accidents, half of all homicides, and one-quarter
of suicides, according to the French equivalent of the U.S. Institutes of Health.
And while coronary heart disease may be less pervasive in that country of 60 million
people than in many others, it is still the number one cause of death.
Within the past year, several other revelations have highlighted this
little-publicized, other side of French drinking:
According to the first French economic study of its kind, France is more like
the U.S. than Americans might realize in that alcohol also ranks first - above
tobacco - in its cost to society. Tobacco takes more of a toll than alcohol in
the rest of Europe, Canada and Australia.
The high premature death rate of French men is largely due to alcohol abuse. It
is nearly double the premature death rate of French women, and the magnitude of
the difference is the highest in Europe, according to the French government's
most recent report on health.
French youth, who can legally drink at age 16, prefer beer and distilled spirits
to wine and have increased their consumption five-fold since 1996 in part
because 12- to 14-year-olds are drinking and binge drinking. This has led to a
new government "War Against Drugs" that includes alcohol.
[...]
The French Paradox. Even in English the expression sounded romantic to 33.7 million
Americans who first heard it in a report by Morley Safer on "60 Minutes" in November
1991. Although the French eat fatty foods and smoke more than Americans, said Safer,
"if you're a middle-aged American man, your chances of dying of a heart attack are
three times greater than a Frenchman of the same age. Obviously, they're doing
something right - something Americans are not doing... Now it's all but confirmed:
Alcohol - in particular red wine - reduces the risk of heart disease."
Within four weeks, U.S. sales of red wine rocketed by 44 percent. American Airlines
reported being unable to stock enough red wine to meet demand. By February 1992, a
Gallup poll showed that 58 percent of Americans were aware of research linking
moderate drinking to lower rates of heart disease. According to the poll, consumers
had returned to drinking levels not seen since the mid-'80s. Although beer remained
the preferred drink of Americans, wine preference increased from 22 to 27 percent.
Five months after the 1992 poll, "60 Minutes" re-broadcast the "French Paradox"
segment. Sales of red wine shot up 49 percent over the previous year. Safer was
honored in France with a special "communication" prize from LVMH Moet He
Vuitton.
During the next few years, the Wine Institute lobbied officials of the U.S.
Department of Health to reflect studies confirming the "60 Minutes" side of French
drinking in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which the industry subsequently used to
market wine as a health elixir. Food and Wines from France, which promotes Gallic
products overseas, placed full-page newspaper ads a
of fatty food was counteracted by drinking French red wine.
"[Health] a
Stephanie Grubbs, marketing manager for Robert Mondavi Coastal, in Impact magazine in
1997. That same year, three out of four readers in the January Consumer Reports on
Health survey believed that moderate red wine consumption is more beneficial than