THE HANDSTAND

 2ndWINTER2011 November-December

medical reports

The Deathly Icing on the Cake: Revealing the Cancerous Truth About Aspartame

Patrick Gallagher
Activist Post

Aspartame, the artificial sweetener found in many diet sodas and used as an ‘alternative’ sweetener, has been found recently to have detrimental – specifically, cancerous – effects.

A study performed by researcher Victoria Innes-Brown, after mounting concerns with how much diet coke her family members seemed to consume daily, showed that of 48 rats experimented on up to 67 percent of all females developed tumors roughly the size of golf balls or larger. The male population didn’t do too well either: 21 percent of the males developed similar cancerous growths.

For the course of her two-and-a-half-year study, Innes-Brown used a dose of NutraSweet (found on shelves in food stores across the nation) comparable to that of 14 cans of diet soda for her 24 female test subjects and 13 cans for her other 24 male subjects; both the amount approved by the FDA (a 50mg per kilogram ratio) as a reasonable dose, and the amount consumed by some likely uninformed individuals.

Though it may seem as news to some readers, aspartame has been a known carcinogen for quite some time. 

Artificial sweetener aspartame (NutraSweet) still included in countless products despite tumor link

Aspartame researcher Dr. Soffritti did a similar pair of studies to Innes-Brown’s. The first study found that consumption of the equivalent of 4 to 5 bottles of diet soda per day yielded high rates of cancerous growths among many of his subjects; the highest dose producing 25 percent of females with cancerous cell growth, compared to 8.7 percent of the control group females. With this study, Soffritti concluded that aspartame at a ratio as low as 400 parts per million (ppm) was considered carcinogenic.

Initially these findings caused quite the controversy and sparked mass denial and nay saying worldwide. Now, after over 900 published studies on the health hazards of the sweetener the nay saying has been curbed substantially.

Such studies have indicated that aspartame is nothing more than a bond of two amino acids found in our own amino acid profile, with a disproportionately large quantity of each bonded together with a known poison. Metabolized in the body, aspartame can yield other more dangerous chemicals such as Methanol and Formaldehyde. 

Bibliography:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17805418
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/04/09/victoria-innessbrowns-aspartame-experiment.aspx
http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.8711

early x-ray screening for cancer ineffective.

»Back to Story X-ray not good for lung cancer screening Thu Oct 27, 2011 An advanced lung tumor detected by chest X-ray. Routine chest X-rays has not been a successful screening test for early diagnosis of lung cancer in smokers and former smokers which may lead to lower death rates.

A study of more than 150,000 older US American people aged 55 to 74 showed that the death rate of those who undertook four annual screening chest X-rays were almost equal with those who didn't have those routine exams.

The new large research funded by the National Cancer Institute supported the results of previous smaller studies suggesting that X-ray is not a suitable screening test for lung cancer.

During the 13 years follow up, “there were 1,696 lung cancers detected in the intervention group and 1,620 lung cancers in the usual care group," according to the report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

However, “1,213 lung cancer deaths were observed in the intervention group versus 1,230 in the usual care group.”

Lung cancer which is more common in older adults is the deadliest type of cancer for both men and women. Each year, more people die of lung cancer than of breast, colon, and prostate cancers combined. Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer while second hand smokers and none smokers are also at risk.

Chest X-ray screening for lung cancer was common decades ago while still some physicians continue to recommend it for smokers and former smokers but, the new study backed by the US government has showed the practice to be useless.

“There really was no benefit of the screening,” said study co-author Dr. Christine Berg. “We detected some of the cancers a little earlier than we would have, but not early enough or in large enough numbers to really have an impact on lung cancer mortality.”

CT scans, which provide much more detailed images than X-rays has showed to be more successful in early detection of lung cancer and preventing deaths among current or former heavy smokers.

However, none of the major medical group has recommend the more expensive technique as a routine lung cancer screening test and are studying to suggest new guidelines to replace regular chest X-rays.

“"Lung cancer screening with low-dose helical CT is the only technology that has ever been shown to lower lung cancer mortality,” Berg said.

But the downsides of CT scans are that they're more expensive, and they have many more false positives because they're much sensitive, she added.

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