Medicine: Livers and Liquor

What causes alcoholics to develop cirrhosis and other frequently fatal liver diseases? Many doctors, noting the tendency of alcoholics to drink more than they eat, believe that poor nutrition plays a key role. But two researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Bronx Veterans Hospital in New York now claim that it is drink alone that does the damage. A four-year study has convinced them that even in the well-nourished, alcohol can be lethal to the liver.

Drs. Emanuel Rubin and Charles Lieber selected baboons for their study because the primates...

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