Health effects, reproductive issues and effects on short-term memory from caffeine; an excerpt from Weinberg and Bealer’s The World of Caffeine: the science and culture of the world’s most popular drug (Routledge, 2001).

If, like the great

majority of people in the world, you use caffeine regularly, you are faced with

a complex, confusing, and often apparently contradictory cacophony of

traditional and contemporary claims about its effects on human health. … In

the last half of the 20th century, an explosion of general medical knowledge

and a large number of controlled experiments have shed scientific light on

many of caffeine’s effects. It has been often and truly said that caffeine is

the most studied drug in history. Yet, because of its nearly universal use, the

variety of its modes of consumption, its presence in and effects on nearly all

bodily systems, and its occurrence in chemically complex foods and

beverages, together with the complexity of the social and psychological

factors that shape its use, caffeine may also be one of the least adequately

understood. Tompaine.com