In 1664, Sir Isaac Newton ascertained that the force drawing objects toward each other was gravity, helping to elucidate why planets orbit around our solar system’s star.
In 1823, Jan Evangelista Purkinje observed that fingerprints are unique to each individual and are left behind on items people touch, thus transforming the efficiency of law enforcement investigations.
In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, drastically altering the medical landscape and how bacterial infections are treated.
And in 2018, a groundbreaking scientific study by the Veterans Affairs Department revealed that daily alcohol use isn’t great for your health.
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Bravo. Money well spent by the VA, the oft-criticized organization that makes paying veterans what they’re owed for disabilities, education and housing appear as laborious as Thanos' quest to amass all six Infinity Stones.
Who needs resources directed at such tedious, shoulder-shrugging tasks when, instead, we can be assured that the tens of people in the entire Milky Way Galaxy currently consuming daily booze for the purpose of health benefits have their knowledge checked? But it’s gluten free!
“There has been mounting evidence that finds light drinking isn’t good for your health,” said Dr. Sarah Hartz, principal researcher of the study.
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Hartz, an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis added that she wasn’t surprised by the results, and that “two large international studies published this year reached similar conclusions,” the VA release said.
An unsurprisingly intelligent researcher and professor not being surprised by unsurprising results should surprise no one.
The predictable findings showed that “downing one to two drinks at least four days per week was linked to a 20 percent increase in the risk of premature death, compared with drinking three times a week or less,” according to the Veterans Affairs blog. “The finding was consistent across the group of more than 400,000 people studied" over a course of seven to 10 years.
Participants ranged in age from 18 to 85 years — Hold on. Four-hundred thousand? It took studying more than 400,000 participants over a period of seven to 10 years to reach that verdict?
The VA could just as easily have saved everyone’s time and paid some poor schmuck named Bobby Joe 10 bucks to stumble down to his local watering hole, take a picture — using his high-tech Motorola Razr — of an all-too-frequent bar-goer who long ago developed aged, leathery skin and a portly stature, and still arrived at the same conclusion.
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Never has a single ripped individual graced the cover of a health magazine while flanked by the words, “Shred your gut by slamming beers!” or “Get jacked on jack and cokes!”
Was John Basedow pummeling daily boxes of wine while pumping out “Fitness Made Simple” VHS tapes? Doubt it.
Time and resource management skills have seldom been recognized as strengths of the Veterans Affairs, but these Mariana Trench-like depths are hard to fathom.
Byzantine-era computer software creating backlogs of veteran claims, insufficient manpower to operate said antiquated systems, and now, blinding us with science. It’s poetry in motion.
Jon Simkins is the executive editor for Military Times and Defense News, and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
