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A new medical study has provided more good news about booze. There is an ingredient in red wine that apparently really does prolong life, at least, the life of mice.

How do we know? In a recent study, mice that were fed all kinds of artery-clogging foods and fattened up were given huge doses of the elixir, while other mice were just fattened up. Despite being obese, the cardiovascular systems of the lucky mice on the regimen remained healthy ' so healthy the researchers, at no less than the Harvard Medical School, rushed to publish their findings even before the study was complete.

The work, which was done along with the National Institute on Aging, determined that heavy doses of the ingredient in red wine called resveratrol, lowers the rate of diabetes, liver problems and other fat-related health problems. While it's too soon to know if the same ingredient works in humans, some scientists were excited by the findings and even called them "spectacular."

But don't reach for a second bottle of juice too fast. To get the amount of the ingredient that the mice were given, you would have to drink 100 bottles of red wine a day, an amount beyond the capacity of even the most delirious wino.

Yet there is hope. The promising ingredient is available as a health supplement, and without a prescription.

Of course, the usual drawback applies. It's not available at a dose that would really make much of a difference. For that salubrious event, you'll need a prescription. Since we all know how promptly the FDA approves new therapies, we can expect that the first prescription will probably be written for one of our great grandchildren.