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Comment
. 2024 Jan;85(1):136-140.
doi: 10.15288/jsad.23-00293. Epub 2023 Dec 11.

ISFAR Reiterates Its Defense of Moderate Alcohol Consumption's Health Benefits

Affiliations
Comment

ISFAR Reiterates Its Defense of Moderate Alcohol Consumption's Health Benefits

Creina S Stockley et al. J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2024 Jan.

Erratum in

  • Erratum for Stockley et al. (2024).
    [No authors listed] [No authors listed] J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2024 May;85(3):436. doi: 10.15288/jsad.23-00293-2. J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2024. PMID: 38708892 No abstract available.
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

Creina S. Stockley reports previous grants from the Australian wine industry including the National Wine Foundation; Australian government bodies such as Wine Australia, Cancer Australia, [Australian] National Health & Medical Research Council, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, DrinkWise Australia, and Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation; and the Friedreich Ataxia Research Alliance, The University of Adelaide, The University of Melbourne, [Australian] The University of Newcastle, The University of Alabama, University Victor Segalen Bordeaux, Universidad Catolica de Chile, and the State Government of South Australia. Dr. Stockley was employed from 1991 to 2017 by the not-for-profit The Australian Wine Research Institute and had paid consultancies from Alcohol Beverages Australia, International Centre for Alcohol Policies, Wine in Moderation, and Alcohol in Moderation. Henk F. J. Hendriks reports previous grants from various Dutch governmental bodies such as OostNL, TIFN, and ZonMW as well as personal fees for lectures from Brewers of Europe, Belgium; Fundación Cerveza y Salud, Spain; CNRIFFI China; Dutch Oenologists Academy, The Netherlands; and Brewers of Europe, Brussels. Dr. Hendriks also had paid consultancies from Carlsberg, Heineken, Danone, IARD, 73100, Geosilica, AIM, and TNO and an educational grant from Diageo plc. Professor R.C. Ellison serves as voluntary Chair of the International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research (ISFAR). Until 2013, when it ceased operations, he was the director of the Institute on Lifestyle & Health at Boston University School of Medicine, which received support from individuals, groups, associations, and companies including from the wine or beverage alcohol industry. These were unrestricted donations to Boston University to support the work of the Institute in monitoring the scientific literature on alcohol and health and providing commentaries; donations were not for funding specific research. Donors had no input into which articles were reviewed by the Institute, the discussions among scientists of the articles, or the conclusions expressed in the commentaries; donors did not know the content of commentaries until they were published for the public. According to records, unrestricted donations from the following three organizations were received between 2007 and 2013: the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, Canandaigua, NY; Diageo, Inc., New York City; and Brown-Forman Corporation, Louisville, KY. No funds have been received since then, and the Institute ceased operation in 2013. In 2010, he became a founder and remains scientific co-director of ISFAR. Over the past 40 years, invited presentations have been made at more than 100 local, regional, national, or international scientific meetings, for which travel expenses were paid as follows: 1. WineHealth, 2013, International Wine & Health Conference, Sydney, Australia, July 18–20, 2013, for which the official sponsor was the government agency International Organisation of Vine and Wine; 2. the 37th Annual Conference of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA), Bethesda, MD, November 7–9, 2013; 3. the 10th International Congress on Coronary Artery Disease, Florence, Italy, October 12–16, 2013, sponsored by the International Congress on Coronary Artery Disease; 4. Science Committee Meeting of DISCUS, Washington, DC, May 21, 2013; 5. Macrowine2012, Bordeaux, France, on June 16–20, 2012, sponsored by the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique of France; 6. the 6th International Wine and Heart Health Summit, in Newberg, OR, November 3–6, 2011; 7. Washington State Grape Society Meeting, Grandview, WA, November 19, 2010; 8. World Wine Symposium, Lago di Como, Italy, on October 28–31, 2010; and 9. WineHealth, 2010, International Wine & Health Conference, Italy, October 3–6, 2010. In addition, in 2016 and 2017 Prof. Ellison received funding from the New York Wine and Grape Foundation to review wine and health research and reports. No funding has been received from alcohol industry sources since that time. ISFAR critiques are prepared by a group of scientists, physicians, and specialists who carry out research in fields related to alcohol and its effects on the human body and disease, and they do not receive any remuneration for their contributions. The discussions of emerging research and critiques are closed to all but the scientific members of ISFAR until they are released to the public through posting on the website: www.alcoholresearchforum. org. The distribution of ISFAR press releases to health editors, the medical community, public health agencies, and relevant policy makers describing new critiques on the ISFAR website is carried out by Alcohol in Moderation (AIM) in the United Kingdom. AIM is a nonprofit organization that publishes a journal (www.aim-digest.com) 10 times per year that summarizes new information related to the use and abuse of alcohol originating from scientists, governmental organizations, the World Health Organization, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) groups. The AIM journal is funded by subscriptions to the journal; subscribers do include some companies and associations in the beverage industry as well as NGO and governmental organizations, researchers, and institutions. None of the professors, physicians, and specialists who are on the AIM Council and/or also on the ISFAR board receive any remuneration for their reviews and analysis published in AIM and on the ISFAR website, and the two co-directors receive an honorarium for time spent in coordinating the critiques. It needs to be documented that ISFAR members are independent, peer-review-published, and respected scientists and medical specialists funded principally by government and not-for-profit organizations.

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