Len Lichtenfeld had a long-overdue apology to make. He was haunted in late 2024 by an exchange with a New York Times reporter almost a decade earlier, during which Lichtenfeld defended the American Cancer Society’s official stance that a drink or two a day was safe, even for cancer prevention.
There was mounting evidence to the contrary, which he knew from epidemiologists on staff, but didn’t mention. Lichtenfeld left something else out, too: Behind the scenes, the American Cancer Society was raking in millions of dollars from the alcohol industry through an annual New York City gala, the details of which are reported here for the first time.
Lichtenfeld, an oncologist who was then deputy chief medical officer at ACS, told STAT he felt indirect pressure to keep those donors happy. “It stayed with me, because I knew it was a conflicted situation,” he said.
In 2020, he was laid off from ACS as part of broader budget cuts, and the society separately changed its advice to say abstaining from alcohol is best for cancer prevention.
Executives told STAT the shift in messaging was the result of a regularly scheduled update of nutrition guidelines. But they acknowledged that staff epidemiologists had pushed for a stronger alcohol statement since the late 2010s.
