Booze bad for you again: "Most studies that suggest moderate drinking staves off heart disease are flawed, according to Australian funded research released here. In the suspect studies, people who had cut back or quit drinking because they were ill, frail or on medication were counted as "abstainers," whose death rates were compared to that of drinkers, an international team of researchers says. The comparisons indicated that those who knocked back up to four drinks a day tended to live longer than abstainers. The mortality difference could have been due to the shabby health of those compelled to give up booze rather than health benefits of alcohol, according to a research team led by universities in San Francisco and Victoria, Canada. "These findings suggest that caution should be exerted in recommending light drinking to abstainers because of the possibility that this result may be more apparent than real," said Tim Stockwell of the Centre for Addictions Research at the University of Victoria."