aspartame or cancer time?

For a few years now we have been hearing rumours about how artificial sweeteners are harmful to your health. Now a medical reasearch team from Italy have experimantally demonstrated the multipotential carcinogenic effects of aspartame. Here is an excerpt from their abstract (click here to get the full paper)

The Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center of the European Ramazzini Foundation has conducted a long-term bioassay on aspartame (APM), a widely used artificial sweetener. APM was administered with feed to 8-week-old Sprague-Dawley rats (100-150/sex/group), at concentrations of 100,000, 50,000, 10,000, 2,000, 400, 80, or 0 ppm. The treatment lasted until natural death, at which time all deceased animals underwent complete necropsy. Histopathologic evaluation of all pathologic lesions and of all organs and tissues collected was routinely performed on each animal of all experimental groups. The results of the study show for the first time that APM, in our experimental conditions, causes

a) an increased incidence of malignant-tumor-bearing animals with a positive significant trend in males and in females , in particular those females treated at 50,000 ppm

b) an increase in lymphomas and leukemias with a positive significant trend in both males and females, in particular in females treated at doses of 100,000, 50,000 , 10,000 , 2,000 or 400 ppm.

c) a positive significant trend of transitional cell carcinomas of the renal pelvis and ureter and their precursors (dysplasias) in females treated at 100,000 50,000, 10,000 , 2,000 or 400 ppm ; and

d) an increased incidence of malignant schwannomas of peripheral nerves with a positive trend in males.