Alcohol damages much more than the liver

Alcohol does much more harm to the body than just damaging the liver. Drinking also can weaken the immune system, slow healing, impair bone formation, increase the risk of HIV transmission and hinder recovery from burns, trauma, bleeding and surgery.

Researchers released the latest findings on such negative effects of alcohol during a meeting Nov. 19 of the Alcohol and Immunology Research Interest Group, held at Loyola University Medical Center.

At Loyola, about 50 faculty members, technicians, post-doctoral fellows and students are conducting alcohol research. Studies at Loyola and other centers could lead to therapies to boost the immune system or otherwise minimize the effects of alcohol, said Elizabeth J. Kovacs, PhD, director of Loyola's Alcohol Research Program and associate director of Loyola's Burn & Shock Trauma Institute.

"Of course, the best way to prevent the damaging effects of alcohol is to not drink in the first place," Kovacs said. "But it is very difficult to get people to do this."  ...

via Alcohol damages much more than the liver.

Beer may be responsible for civilization as we know it.

Over the years, beer has brought countless people together. But researchers now say beer isn't just responsible for sparking new friendships and relationships -- it might also be responsible for the rise of human civilization.

Archaeologists believe that when Stone Age farmers in Southwest Asia began harvesting grain -- a process long considered to be a precursor to the advent of civilization -- they weren't doing it to produce food.

Instead, they say agriculture's early seeds were sown in an attempt to brew beer, according to LiveScience.com.

Scholars believe Neolithic groups in the Natufian culture began settling down and farming cereal grains about 11,500 years ago. But archaeological evidence reportedly shows that barley and rice were only minor parts of the diets of early humans -- leading researchers to believe they might have been used for drinks at parties.  ... "Feasts are essential in traditional societies for creating debts, for creating factions, for creating bonds between people, for creating political power, for creating support networks, and all of this is essential for developing more complex kinds of societies," he said.

via AOLNews

Creating social bonds is not, I believe, the reason people invested so much time originally.  I think this is the real answer:

“The search for unpolluted drinking water is as old as civilization itself. As soon as there were mass human settlements, waterborne diseases like dysentery became a crucial population bottleneck. For much of human history, the solution to this chronic public-health issue was not purifying the water supply. The solution was to drink alcohol.”

Often the most pure fluid available was alcohol — in beer and, later, wine — which has antibacterial properties. Sure, alcohol has its hazards, but as Johnson breezily observes, “Dying of cirrhosis of the liver in your forties was better than dying of dysentery in your twenties.”

via Faustasblog

Clean water is still a big problem in parts of the world, as is alcoholism in the third world.   I speculate that we are still stuck with an evolved vestigial desire for booze because in the past alcohol drinkers were the ones who survived in areas with dirty water.