Everybody has heard the rumor: alcohol kills brain cells (just
the weak ones, joked a comedian). And if the rumor were true,
surely the effect would show up after decades of drinking. With
the same large group of twins that they are using in the Duke
Alzheimer's disease study (see article), Joe Christian and his
colleagues recently studied the connection between long-term
alcohol intake and cognitive functioning in aging men. They
divided the twins up into nondrinkers, past drinkers (those who
had quit drinking), and five categories of social drinkers, from
light to heavy. It turns out that moderate drinkers (eight to
sixteen drinks per week) scored higher on a test of mental
acuity than everyone else. What's more, if one of a pair of
identical twins was a moderate drinker and the other a light
drinker, the moderately drinking twin scored higher. "No
evidence was found," writes Christian, "for negative effects on
cognitive function related to the consumption of moderate
amounts of alcohol." This is not to dow