Questionable Benefits of Drinking Red Wine

Again The Times has focused attention to the benefits of red wine as presented in the Nov. 17, 1991, “60 Minutes” segment “The French Paradox” without raising questions about whether or not the broadcast may have been flawed (“To Your Health,” April 18).

In the article, it was rightly noted that “the sales spurt was a welcome relief to the wine industry, which has been in the doldrums for nearly a decade.” But should we prop up an industry by encouraging people to believe, quite dubiously at best, that if they wash their burgers and fries down with Cabernet Sauvignon or Zinfandel they will live longer lives?

The causes of mortality are multiple and complex; simplifying them can easily lead to false conclusions. Overall, death rates for acute myocardial infarction are higher in France (70.7 per 100,000) than they are in the United States (50.9 per 100,000).

If avoiding heart attacks is the goal, then we should look more closely at Japan, where the death rate for acute myocardial infarction is a very low 20.7 per 100,000.

Heart attacks remain the No. 1 cause of death in France, and death rates from cancers of the stomach and lung, as well as those for liver diseases and cirrhosis of the liver, are higher in France than they are in the United States.

Though male life expectancy in France is slightly higher than in the United States, French males do not live as long as those in Hawaii or Utah, neither of which are known for their red wine consumption.

Heart attack death rates for American males have dropped steadily since 1960, and I know of no serious study that attributes even a small fraction of that decrease to increased red wine consumption. We should not support increased wine consumption as a cure-all for heart disease and a way of increasing longevity without much more careful study.

GARY PETERS

The writer is associate dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Cal State Long Beach.