UK News 11-12-2001 Binge Drinkers Risking Death who: The Chief Medical Officer, Professor Liam Donaldson what: Warns of `soaring` rates of liver disease in young people where: LONDON when: Yesterday snippet: "The government is considering health warnings on alcohol in response to alarming evidence of the extent to which binge drinking among young people is causing long term liver damage and premature death," reports the Guardian`s John Carvel this morning after Chief Medical Office Liam Donaldson released his annual report yesterday. "Since the early 1970s there has been a sevenfold rise in cirrhosis death rates among women 35 to 44," notes the Sun. "Last year nearly 300 women aged 24 to 44 died of the disease. The number of women drinking over the recommended limits has risen from ten per cent in 1988 to 15 per cent in 1998." The rise in male death rates since the early 1970s is eightfold, although the total of men drinking more than Department of Health guidelines has remained steady for over a decade, at 27 per cent. "This is not a moral message but it is a message of warning, to young people particularly, that if this pattern of drinking is established over several years then they will be the liver transplants or even the liver deaths at an early age in the future," professor Donaldson said. "This is not a message of abstinence. That would not be reality, and alcohol is an important part of people`s social life. "But heavy alcohol consumption, particularly binge drinking - the patterns we have seen over the last 10 years or so - are not a feature of many other European countries but they are a feature here." The Sun`s Health Editor Jacqui Thornton pooh-poohs the advice from the man she calls "Nanny-in-chief" Donaldson. "Of course women are drinking more. They have better jobs, more money just like men. Alas, our bodies can`t cope with as much alcohol as men. But this doesn`t mean we can`t drink, nor can we be patronised for doing so." [... more]

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