Maybe Its Pink, Maybe Its Not Breast Healthy

Currently the legislature in Hawaii is contemplating a ban on aspartame. I have spoken out about this toxin for decades. I speak out as well about the risk of its heir, sucralose. Both should be avoided without question.

A pharmacist comments: I have practiced pharmacy for 50 years during which time several products including thalidomide, MER 29 and Vioxx, have been marketed with FDA approval, which have resulted in disfigurement and death.

In the sheer numbers, nothing has ever come close to aspartame in causing harm to people. I deal extensively with diabetics and I have seen close to miraculous improvements in insulin response once they stop using aspartame. I have seen similar results in patients with Lupus, headaches and joint pain.

To The Honorable Rep. Josh Green, M.D., Chair:

Aspartame consumption as a causative agent of Breast Cancer

Woodrow C. Monte Ph.D.
Professor of Food Science, Arizona State University (Retired), Page, Arizona
woodymonte@canyoncountry.net

It is a pleasure to be writing to a physician. The mechanism of Aspartame poisoning is so much easier to explain to someone with a medical background.

I am a retired Professor of Food Science from Arizona State University. I have studied, researched and written about Aspartame since 1983, shortly after its manufacturer applied to the FDA to expand its use as an additive to soft drink beverages. In 1984 I published a scientific paper warning of the potential harm that
Aspartame might cause by increasing the methanol consumption of the unwary consumer(1).

I have within the last 3 months published 3 additional articles chronicling, in detail, the aftermath of 27 years of Aspartame poisoning of the general public(78,194,202). These articles and all of the reference material that they draw on are freely available on my website.
http://www.thetruthaboutstuff.com/
Article 1
http://www.thetruthaboutstuff.com/review1.shtml
Article 2
http://www.thetruthaboutstuff.com/review2.shtml
Article 3
http://www.thetruthaboutstuff.com/review3.shtml

Every molecule of Aspartame converts to methanol within minutes of being consumed. The first step in methanol metabolism is production of formaldehyde. Next to the liver the greatest concentration of Alcohol Dehydrogenase Enzyme(ADH) in the human body is located in the endothelial tissue of the human breast(190b). It is human ADH that converts methanol into formaldehyde, a powerful carcinogen.

The chart below shows the relationship between Aspartame consumption and the increase of breast cancer in the United States. Similar increases in breast cancer(190) have occurred in other aspartame consuming countries of the world.[]

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. Formaldehyde from contaminated air, at very low
concentrations(11), causes cancer in humans. 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). 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 in populations exposed to Aspartame(194).

The breast is an organ with no way to protect itself from formaldehyde 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). 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). 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
keeps 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 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.