LIKE BROTHER, LIKE SISTER

Conventional medical wisdom holds that men are driven to alcoholism primarily by their genes, women by their social environment. Not so, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association by a team led by researchers at the Medical College of Virginia. Interviewing 1,030 sets of female twins, they found that when one sister was alcoholic, odds that the other would have a drinking problem were greater among identical vs. fraternal siblings. Heredity accounts for 50% to 60% of a woman's vulnerability to alcoholism, about the same as for men.