International Journal of Epidemiology 2001;30:653-654
© International Epidemiological Association 2001
Editorial |
Alcohol—The changing face of a perennial problem
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel St, London WC1E 7HT, UK.
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Alcohol is the epidemiological ‘risk factor’ with the longest history of systematic study. In the 19th Century many life assurance companies partitioned their business according to whether their policy holders were alcohol abstainers or not. This was done in the belief that abstainers were lower risks—and therefore could be offered more favourable premiums or bonuses. This policy decision, like many others since, was taken in the absence of good evidence. It was based on what was regarded by many in the business as the self-evident truth that abstention was physically (and morally) the preferred option. Actuarial analyses that supported this belief started to be published in the late 1890s. The most systematic evidence came a few years later in 1904 when Moore published an analysis of mortality among over sixty thousand policy holders who had taken out life assurance with the United Kingdom Temperance and General Provident Institution over the