Aspartame: Cancer alert!
Noel Peterson, N.D.
When the results of his study found that aspartame caused cancer in his laboratory rats, Dr. Morando Soffritti knew he was about to be thrown into a bitter controversy over this sweetener. Aspartame is sold under the brand names Nutra-Sweet and Equal and is found in such popular products as Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Snapple and Sugar Free Kool-Aid. Hundreds of millions of people consume it worldwide.
At a daily dose of 20 mg/kg body weight, (be equivalent to four to five 20-ounce bottles of diet soda a day for a 150-pound person) researchers found that aspartame caused in animals a) an increased incidence of malignant-tumors, b) an increase in lymphomas and leukemias c) a increased incidence kidney and ureter precancers and cancers in females; and d) an increased incidence of malignancies in peripheral nerves. All of the increased cancer incidences were statistically significant.
The findings generated a flurry of criticism from the Calorie Control Council, a trade group for makers of artificial sweeteners that has spent the last 25 years trying to quell fears about aspartame. It said Dr. Soffritti's study flew in the face of four earlier cancer studies that aspartame's creator, G. D. Searle & Company, had underwritten and used to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to approve it for human consumption. "Aspartame has been safely consumed for more than a quarter of a century and is one of the most thoroughly studied food additives," read one news release from the council.
The Ramazzini study was conducted with 1,900 rats, as opposed to the 280 to 688 rodents used in Searle's studies, and the rats lived for up to three years instead of being sacrificed after two, which is the human equivalent of age 53. "Cancer is a disease of the third part of life," Dr. Soffritti said. "You have 75 percent of cancer diagnoses for people who are 55 years old or older. So if you truncate the experiments at 110 weeks and the rats are supposed to survive until 150 to 160 weeks, it means you avoid the development of cancer at the time when cancer would be starting to arise."
In an analysis of 166 articles on aspartame published in medical journals from 1980 to 1985, Dr. Ralph G. Walton, a professor of psychiatry at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine found that all 74 studies that were financed by the industry attested to sweetener's safety.
Of the 92 independently funded articles, 84 identified adverse health effects. "Whenever you have studies that were not funded by the industry, some sort of problem is identified," said Dr. Walton, "It's far too much for it to be a coincidence."
DR. SOFFRITTI and his colleagues in Bologna, Italy oversee 180 scientists and researchers in 30 countries who collaborate on toxin research. The Ramazzini cancer lab where the study was conducted has earned considerable credibility since it was founded in 1971 for its pioneering research on chemicals. It was the first research body to do studies showing that vinyl chloride and the gasoline additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or M.T.B.E., are carcinogenic, research that eventually encouraged the United States to strictly regulate vinyl chloride and that led 21 states to ban M.T.B.E.
The study was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol 114, #3, March 2006 and is available online: (http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2005/8711/abstract.html).