Last Call for Alcohol: Time for Doctors to Rethink Drinking

"Wine,” Hippocrates wrote some 2400 years ago, “is a thing wonderfully appropriate to man if … administered with appropriate and just measure.” Times have changed. Red wine is no longer considered a magical elixir that can protect the heart. No amount appears safe at all. In early January, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for adding cancer warnings to alcohol labels like those on tobacco products. But are doctors drinking less? Are they counseling their patients to do the same? This collection of articles and commentaries explores how medicine is coming to terms with the changing understanding of alcohol’s potential harms.