TheTruthAboutStuff.com
Review 3 - Published February 2008
Monte WC. 2008, Bittersweet: Aspartame Breast Cancer Link. Fitness Life 2008 Feb 34:21-22
Formaldehyde from contaminated air, at very low concentrations(11), causes cancer in humans. Formaldehyde is a powerful cancer causing agent, one of the handful of chemicals classed as a Group I carcinogen by the IARC, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France(11), because of this there is no known safe level of formaldehyde exposure. Gaseous environmental formaldehyde causes nasopharyngeal cancer, however, it is not known, in the gaseous form, to cause breast cancer. The probable reason for this is that formaldehyde has an extremely high reactivity(201) it reacts with and does its damage to the first human tissue with which it makes contact. Formaldehyde does not travel well in protein rich blood supply(122) and because of this it is blocked from reaching the breast and other internal organs. The only way that formaldehyde can reach the mammary tissue, aside from purposely injecting formaldehyde solution(122) (as in embalming) is to disguise the formaldehyde as methanol. The methanol from Aspartame can reach a woman’s breast and will there is readily converted into formaldehyde by ADH(190b).
It is not possible to prevent Aspartame from producing the cancer causing compound formaldehyde in a woman’s breast(78). All of the methanol in diet soda must be transformed into formaldehyde before the body can metabolize it. The scientifically acclaimed Ramazzini Institute recently found consumption of Aspartame over time caused Breast Cancer in Rats(50). The methanol that is responsible for producing this formaldehyde is also found in our processed food supply, the average modern woman not exposed to diet products consumes, conservatively, less than 8 milligrams of it a day(1). Methanol has be implicated as a possible cause of the increase of breast cancer over the last 25 years and can be found in human milk(219). One can of diet soda contains over 4 times this amount, one liter almost 20 times what would be average. Primitive and or impoverished woman consume little methanol and are protected, to a very great extent, from breast cancer. Conversely increased consumption of Aspartame has caused breast cancer rates to increase dramatically(194).
It can be shown that the incidence of breast cancer has increased dramatically over the last 25 years(219) and particularly in populations exposed to Aspartame(194).
The breast is an organ with no way to protect itself from formaldehyde(216) with no means to render it harmless. The methanol, always produced when Aspartame is consumed (20,51),will convert directly into formaldehyde, there is no intermediate compound or alternate path(7,30). “Class I Alcohol dehydrogenase” ADH is required for the conversion of methanol to formaldehyde(112). ADH is not a common enzyme in the human body, not many cells in the human body contains this enzyme. The human breast is one of the few organs in the body with a high concentration of ADH(190b) and it is found there exclusively in the mammary epithelial cells, the very cells known to transform into adenocarcinoma(190c) (breast cancer) cells with very low aldehyde dehydrogenase activity(216).
The most recent breast cancer scientific literature implicates ADH as perhaps having a pivotal role in the formation of breast cancer, indicating a greater incidence of the disease in those with higher levels of ADH activity in their breasts(190a). One article went so far as to implicate acetaldehyde as a potential culprit(190a). Acetaldehyde is the molecule that ethanol is metabolized into by ADH, the first step in the manufacture of vinegar, a beneficial molecule with no link to carcinogenicity, what so ever. Recent scientific literature is a desert when it comes to methanol. It is as if there were no such thing as methanol in the environment as if methanol did not exist, as if all the laboratories doing work in methanol toxicity had vanished from the face of the earth 40 years ago and with them the science of methanol poisoning(39).
The truth is that methanol acts as a golden bullet, wasting none of its destructive power but administering a carcinogen directly inside those breast cells most vulnerable to cancer.
All of the hundreds of test that were done to prove Aspartame safe were done on animals insensitive to methanol poisoning(78). This was well known to the company who invented Aspartame, why else would they have hired the worlds methanol research laboratories to help them prove aspartame was safe(39)? These animals have a specialized catalase enzyme in their livers that humans do not(55). Catalase helps keep methanol out of their general circulation and therefore they are mostly immune to methanol as a poison. Many thousands of people lost their lives in the early nineteen hundreds when methanol was allowed in foods and medications after it was proven falsely safe by trusting methanol safety testing done on an identical array of animals(17,30).
Twenty six years ago I traveled from my laboratory at Arizona State University to Washington DC to view the results of the testing done by the company who invented Aspartame and were seeking it’s approval for use in carbonated beverages. I will never forget viewing the data from the only high dosage human consumption study done on diabetics. This study was never to be repeated. Before the test began the subjects were screened for all manner of illnesses and certified disease free (save from diabetes) as a prerequisite to being accepted into the study. During that study, after 11 weeks of high dose aspartame consumption two of the women developed epithelial cancer. Both were removed from the study, one had a mastectomy, subsequent pathology tested conclusively for adenocarcinoma. To my most profound horror, the executive summary of that study concluded that Aspartame was safe! The rational used to ignore the fact that none of the placebo group but fully 8% of the Aspartame consumption subjects developed epithelial cancer during the high dosage consumption study was that “no such cancers were seen in the numerous animal studies”(48). The Bressler Report exposed that this was, in fact. a lie (197), These cancers should have never been ignored.
I can not say that methanol is the only cause of breast cancer, there are so many other poisons in our modern environment. I will say that it is intuitively obvious that there would be no good done producing one more cancer causing agent inside a sensitive breast cell already exposed to other cancer causing agents.
Breast cancer, as with MS may possibly be linked to cigarette smoking(191) which is a source of methanol (even though smoking would be a much more efficient mechanism to administer methanol to the brain than the breast). The uneven distribution of both MS and Breast cancer throughout the world show a disarming similarity(193) even to the unexplained increases to epidemic proportions in the same regions over the last 30 years(190), such as Japan(192). Then of course we have the chart I presented in the December issue of Fitness Life showing a disconcerting, abrupt rise in incidence of breast cancer coinciding exactly with the ramp up of Aspartame consumption after it was approved for sweetening carbonated beverages in the United States(194).
As a food scientist I have been trained to detect food borne disease. Breast cancer and MS are two diseases that I believe are linked to methanol poisoning derived primarily from food. With this observation I hope to point the way to my colleagues in the healing arts to continue with the investigation of this poisoning.
Unfortunately no major pharmacological laboratory anywhere in the world seems to have any time for studying poisoning. The considerable brain power of medical research seems mesmerized by the quest for ever more expensive cures while leaving the details of prevention to the “lesser” sciences. The reason’s for this are obvious… to cure a poisoning you need only teach how to limit exposure… there is no real money to be made from good advice.
A courageous new history may someday designate our era as the dark ages of the health sciences.
Poison taints the “swich licour” in which our tissues are “bathed”. Knowing the cause of any malfunction in our almost perfect workings we must consider first the impact of our poisoned environment.
The wild natural world of our ancient forbearers seems, to me, a friendlier place to our countenance than this one we have tamed with new processes and chemical tools who’s power we do not fully understand and appear to have no interest in knowing.
Methanol is an unwanted residue of our quest for leisure and release from the burden of constant search for sustenance(194). It has been around since man first tasted meat cooked on an open fire or was forced, by hunger, to eat a fruit long past its prime(35). It has been to our great disadvantage that it has now been made to taste sweet(14).
Here then is the bizarre, dark side to sweet Aspartame. Its workings are too rich in design and simple in nature to have been plotted, in purpose, by any human hand… to splendid to consign to serendipity. There is magic in the mischief of this little molecule. I suggest that we will be surprised to learn what it can teach us.
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