Alcohol-related deaths should be more than just statistics.

Since last March, a traveling exhibit has been making its way across the nation. It consists of 1,054 pairs of combat boots lined up to represent U.S. soldiers who have been killed in Iraq, most of them after May 1, 2003, when major combat operations were declared over.

Michael McConnell of Chicago, regional director for the American Friends Service Committee, an international Quaker organization, created the exhibit. He said he conceived the exhibit about a year ago because he felt the human face of the war was not being shown to the public. "It's very important that people realize the full cost of the Iraq war," he said. "I didn't want the deaths to become just a statistic."

Unless it involves a friend or relative, for most of us death is little more than a statistic, and that doesn't apply just to lives lost in the Iraq war.

When the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported earlier this year that alcohol-related traffic deaths in 2003 dropped by three percent from the previous year to 17,013, news reports noted that the figure was still too high.

That is 16 times as many deaths as those who lost their lives in Iraq, but there are no traveling exhibits to remind Americans that this figure should not be regarded merely as a statistic.

Alcohol-related traffic deaths, however, are only a part of the picture. In its September 24, 2004 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided a more complete picture. In an article dealing with the number of deaths and years of potential life lost which the CDC attributes to "the harmful effects of excessive alcohol use," noting that excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer, the CDC data indicated that approximately 75,766 alcohol-attributed deaths and 2.3 million years of potential life resulted from excessive drinking in 2001.

The CDC figure for motor vehicle deaths is 3,339 less than the NHTSA total. That is because the CDC figure includes only traffic fatalities in which excessive drinking is involved, which they define as the standard for binge drinking of five drinks per occasion for men and four drinks per occasion for women. NHTSA's total includes fatals involving moderate alcohol use as well as excessive alcohol use.