The disclosure that the 1987 recommendation was prompted by “a feeling that you had to say something” came from Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced it.
He told The Times that the committee’s epidemiologist had confessed that “it’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t” because “we don’t really have any data whatsoever”.
Mr Smith, a former Editor of the British Medical Journal, said that members of the working party were so concerned by growing evidence of the chronic damage caused by heavy, long-term drinking that they felt obliged to produce guidelines. “Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee,” he said.
There is a similar phenomena here in the States specifically with respect to pregnant women drinking. At least a few studies have suggested that moderate consumption of alcohol can have health benefits to mother and child, but the medical community is very leery of any sort of endorsement for pregnant women drinking because such a suggestion could easily be abused.
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