The controversy over moderate drinking is an ongoing debate about the claimed benefit or harm to human health from moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages. Moderate consumption typically means the consumption of no more than one drink of an alcoholic beverage a day. There is wide consensus that over-drinking is harmful: alcohol damages human cells and organs such as the brain, liver and kidneys, and it weakens the immune system. On the other hand, some studies suggest at least a mild benefit from drinking red wine that may help prevent coronary heart disease, though it is difficult to design a study that separates the effects of wine consumption from other factors such as differences in affluence and behavior among those who do and do not drink red wine. Critics of moderate drinking claim that any benefits are far outweighed by the harms and that these benefits can be had by less risky means.
Research on the effects of moderate drinking is in its early stages. No long term studies have been done and control groups would be difficult to establish because of the many variables. Given the current state of the research, an editorial concludes in the December 1997 issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine that the recommendation to be a moderate drinker is "not only meaningless but also irresponsible" given that the many obvious health hazards of alcohol outweigh "the benefits of alcohol [which] are small and ill-understood" particularly when so many other cardiovascular treatments are available.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ National Toxicology Program listed alcohol as a known carcinogen in 2000. The NTP profile report on alcohol states that incidences of cancer rise dramatically when alcohol is used in conjunction with tobacco, another known carcinogen.
However, it is inevitable that humans intake some moderate amount of alcohol, even if they never drink in their lives. This is because of the fact that many of the bacteria in our absolutely teeming intestines use alcohol fermentation as a form of respiration. This metabolic method produces alcohol as a waste product, the same way that our metabolism results in the formation of Carbon Dioxide and Water. Thus, we always intake some quantity of alcohol, which is produced by these benign bacteria. In fact, if we eat enough carbohydrates (a few pieces of bread, for instance), the alcohol levels in our bowels can soar to the equivalent of a few ounces of wine, some quantity of which will inevitably be absorbed by the intestinal wall, and thus circulated throughout our bloodstream.
The notion that alcohol is so incredibly harmful is in part mistaken as well. Alcohol, in small quantities, is actually more beneficial than it is harmful. Besides the tanons in wine, the alcohol itself is necessary to attain cardiovascular health. In nature, the quantity of alcohol necessary to prevent heart disease is mostly produced by the benign microorganisms that use alcohol fermentation, but in the modern world, humans tend to consume far larger quantities of fat and cholesterol than they did in Paleolithic times. Therefore it may be necessary to intake a moderate quantity of alcohol to maintain homeostasis long into your adult life.