WHAT SUSAN G. KOMEN FOUNDATION WON'T TELL YOU

ARTIFICIAL SWEETENER - BREAST CANCER CONNECTION REVEALED


DALLAS - March 15, 2002 -- Strong scientific statistical evidence now links the artificial sweetener, aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet) to breast cancer. The American Cancer Society figures show breast cancer cases have doubled since 1981, the year aspartame was approved for use as a food additive. Aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet) is added to over 5,000 foods,drinks, chewing gums, breath mints, children's vitamins and medications. Products containing the hidden trigger for breast cancers are sold in almost 100 countries.

Internationally known food safety consultant, author and founder of the grassroots organization, Aspartame Consumer Safety Network in 1987, Mary Nash Stoddard, offers chemical proof that the synthetic amino acids that compose aspartame-- phenylalanine, aspartic acid, and the methanol with which they are bound, are neurotoxins [nerve poisons]. Phenylalanine (50% of aspartame) lowers the seizure threshold and degrades into DKP, a proven tumor causing agent. Aspartic acid (40% of aspartame) caused holes in the brains of mice (Dr. John Olney, neuroscientist, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.)

Methanol (wood alcohol, 10% of aspartame) is a cumulative toxin in the body. Since it is "free" methanol", appearing without ethanol (the antidote for methanol toxicity always present in natural food such as fruit juice), the methanol in aspartame is lethal. Methanol destroys the optic nerve and can cause blindness. Fetal tissue cannot tolerate methanol.

In addition, the methanol in aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet) breaks down into formaldehyde (embalming fluid) and formic acid which has the chemical composition of ant venom. Formic acid is used commercially in products such as paint stripper.

There is solid, dramatic proof [from recent records released by the Freedom of Information Act] that aspartame caused dozens of mammary tumors in animals tested from 1971 to 1974 by G.D. Searle, the pharmaceutical company, responsible for aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet).

Searle committed criminal acts by falsifying results of their animal testing when they presented tainted evidence of aspartame safety to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) for approval as a "food additive."

The U.S. Government trusts the manufacturer of a product to perform its own safety tests.

A twenty-five year old trade memo reveals Searle's concern about aspartame's stability: "We have no way of estimating maximum likely abuse, and hence need to utilize data based on almost complete conversion to DKP. We stand a good chance of ending up with nothing."

Among the findings Searle Laboratories ended up with in a complete conversion to DKP were mammary tumors, brain tumors, uterine polyps, enlarged pituitary and thyroid glands and atrophied testes.

The animals under test in the 115 Week Oral Tumor Study in the Rat, with DKP, were 360 albino rats, 21 days old. Rats are less sensitive than human beings and the amount of DKP fed to the test animal correlates to human ingestion.

"In any such study of even a few hundred test animals, it takes no more than a dozen or so of them to exhibit a particular lesion... to associate with the test agent, i.e., aspartame or its related chemicals." (Dr. Adrian Gross, FDA toxicologist, in a letter to Senator Metzenbaum, Oct. 30, 1986.)

Here is a description of mammary tumors found in Female Rat.No.M17LF, (a low dose female) fed DKP in rat chow. "In toto" means the tissue has been left to deteriorate before microscopic examination, one of the felonious things Searle did to hide negative results.

Mammary Gland:
Mass (1) A 3 X 3 X 2.5 cm. Spheroidal Multi-nodular yellowish non-adherent to the surrounding muscles or tissue (submitted in toto) Mass (2) 2X5 X 2X1 cm. Irregularly shaped, spheroidal, smooth, yellowish white firm mass located subcutaneously and adjacent to the above described mass (submitted in toto) mass non-adherent to the surrounding muscles or tissues.

Mass (3) A 2.3 X 1cm. Irregularly shaped, multinodular, yellowish white, firm mass located subcutaneously on the rt. Axillary area. Mass non-adherent to the surrounding muscles or tissues (submitted in toto).

Mass (4) A 3X1X1 cm. Elongated, multinodular, yellowish white, firm mass located subcutaneously on the left inguinal area. Mass non-adherent to the surrounding muscles or tissues (submitted in toto.)

Mass (5) A 2X1.5 X 1 cm. Flat, multinodular, yellowish white firm mass located subcutaneously of the rt. Inguinal area. Mass non-adherent to the surrounding muscles or tissues (submitted in toto.)

Pathologist Dr. Charles H. Frith spent 3 days with the FDA to review 145 animals from Searle's DKP toxicity study. Sufficient slides substantiated 73 female animals with grossly observed masses. (Bressler Report to FDA)

To hide the mammary tumors, Searle scientists excised them and returned the animals to the study or removed the tumors, post-mortem (after death).

Malignancies were made to appear benign. Searle explained that a computer "programming error" was responsible.

Dr. Gross interviewed all concerned with the tests and concluded that "to accept the Searle explanation is to believe that the unfavorable mammary malignancy data were innocently omitted from the summary table four separate times by three different individuals (Congressional Record, 1985.)

The following statistics are from SEER, (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) The statistics are age standardized and computed to account for slight surges, due to mammogram screening.

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in women between the ages of 35-54. In 1971, a woman's lifetime risk for contracting breast cancer was one in fourteen. Today it is one in eight. (The Breast Cancer Prevention Program, Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. and David Steinman, Macmillan, 1997)

Breast cancer began to rise rapidly concurrent with the use of aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet), when it was approved in 1981 for table top use in dry foods and, in 1983, for use in sweetening aqueous solutions - carbonated beverages.

Between 1940-1982, there was a steady, annual rate of breast cancer increase of about 1% per year.

Between 1982-1987, the increase in breast cancer accelerated to 4%, annually. (ACS)

Between 1983-1988 the per capita consumption of aspartame quadrupled (USDA)

Increased longevity is not the reason for the rise in breast cancer cases. Life expectancy rates have remained relatively stable since 1950, while the incidence of breast cancer has increased by about 55% (The Breast Cancer Prevention Program, Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. and David Steinman), Macmillan, 1997)

Mammogram accounts for finding 10% of all breast cancer cases. The woman herself discovers the other 90% of breast cancer cases.

Although the numbers are recorded separately from other breast cancers by the American Cancer Society, DCIS, Ductile Carcinoma in Situ accounts for 40% of all breast cancer detected by mammogram. DCIS is abnormal (sometimes called pre-cancerous) cells confined to the milk ducts of the breasts.

On a mammogram, DCIS shows up as tiny specks of calcium.(Wessex Cancer Trust, England).

Oncologists now categorize different kinds of DCIS (cribiform, comedo, papillary, solid type, low intermediate and high nuclear grade) One description of a case of DCIS, comedo type reads: Solid sheets of malignant cells fill the dilated (milk) ducts. The center of the involved ducts undergoes necrosis and calcification (Online, Management of Breast Diseases).

From 1983-1989, the years in which aspartame use quadrupled, DCIS rose 52%. There were 23,000 DCIS cases in 1992; 30,000 in 1996 and 36,000 estimated for 1998, 200% higher than was projected in 1983. (Ductile Carcinoma In Situ of the Breast by Gil Lederman, M.D.)

"A Diagnosis on the Rise." "Is It Really Breast Cancer?" "Weighing Treatment Options", and "A Mysterious Condition" are medical problems "Good Housekeeping" magazine tried to answer for their readers, in 1996.

The problem is that there is no way to tell if early stage cancer, as DCIS is sometimes called will develop into invasive cancer. The only information about its natural course comes from three small studies which found 30% of women who had biopsies developed breast cancer within ten years of the biopsies, but it wasn't clear why this happened in some cases and not in others.

DCIS is a poorly understood condition. A University of California, San Francisco report, found that while the number of cases of ductile carcinoma in situ has risen dramatically in the last 15 years, clinicians still do not know the best treatment approach. (DCIS research from cookbook author, Carol Guilford)

In 1992, 10,000 American women diagnosed with DCIS underwent a mastectomy.The increasing incident rates for DCIS "mirror what all of us have been seeing in practice for the last decade", says Dr. Hiram Cody, a breast cancer specialist at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. "This study (from UCSF) creates the impression that a large number of women are being treated with mastectomy, but these numbers are declining all the time."

Dr. Virginia Ernster, UCSF professor: "These findings (the unexpected increase in DCIS) underscore an urgent need to determine the best treatment for DCIS, as well as for research to define which DCIS cases will progress to invasive cancer."

When aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet) is exposed to temperatures above 86 degrees F, it turns into its neurotoxic breakdown products. [Body temperature is 98.6 F] Based on the unbiased research studies we have unearthed from published reports, we believe we have the answer to the reason breast cancer rates have reached almost epidemic proportions - along with ovarian/uterine cancers in women. The trigger for those types of cancers in the lab we can state with certainty - was aspartame.
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Taken from public records and toxicology sourcebook, Deadly Deception
- Story of Aspartame [Odenwald Press 1998]

For more information:
http://www.aspartamesafety.com

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