The carbohydrate-deficient transferring (CDT) test, manufactured by the Anglo-Scandinavian diagnostics company Axis-Shield, is expected to be marketed early next year in the United States by the Californian company BioRad.
When the news of the new test was reported recently, a long-time healthcare professional who works in alcoholism and substance abuse treatment field, wrote to question the validity of the test as a diagnostic tool. His comments, published anonymously, follow:
Much to Do About Nothing
The ado about the new CDT test is a measure of how desperate we are for any kind of help in the substance abuse treatment area. Apparently, the CDT is not a "test for alcoholism" at all or even a dramatic and new test for risk of alcoholism which tells us things we never could know before.It appears to be just one more test -- and there are already many -- which measures whether an individual has been drinking heavily enough to have some physical, biological, measurable consequences due to drinking. It is only a predictor in the sense that anyone who has been drinking heavily enough to have physical consequences might show up positive on the CDT, just as they might show up positive on any one of the other measures already available.
People who have been drinking heavily are indeed at higher risk of continuing to drink heavily and to show other signs of alcoholism.
This is not news at all to anyone. Usually it is not hard to identify people who drink a lot, we can easily tell who is drinking a lot. The problem is not in identifying these troubled people, the problem is in motivating them for and in helping them to become successful in treatment.
No 'Magic Wand'
We need to stop hoping for a new "magic wand" to help us deal with the substance abuse epidemic around us. Increased public awareness, increased consequences for inappropriate driving and other behavior while drinking, perhaps increased funding for treatment and perhaps preventive measures, and increased insistence on taking recovery seriously are the main answers.While we all hope for new and better diagnostic and treatment tools, we all fool ourselves by waiting for some magical new "cure." We set ourselves up for disappointment and we distract ourselves from our true jobs if we seek "magic bullets."
Apparently, the CDT will take its appropriate small place right alongside all the other appropriate and small diagnostic and treatment tools, but let's not get all excited about it. We are attracted to flashy new developments, but they rarely turn out well.
We need to renew our determination to continue our steady, hard, responsible work, that is where the long term payoff is.
