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American Dairy Farmers are using Monsanto hormone, rBGH
- rBGH-milk causes cancer
- No rBGH labeling
required on milk containers
Monsanto's
Hormonal Milk Poses Serious Risks of Colon Cancer, Prostate Cancer
and Breast Cancer, Warns Professor of Environmental and
Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago School
of Public Health.
As reported in a May 9 article in The Lancet,
women with a relatively small increase in blood levels of the naturally
occurring growth
hormone Insulin-like Growth Factor I (IGF-1) are up to seven
times more likely to develop premenopausal breast cancer than women
with
lower levels. Based on those results, the report concluded that
the risks of elevated IGF-1 blood levels are among the leading
known risk factors for breast cancer, and are exceeded only by
a strong family history or unusual mammographic abnormalities.
Apart from breast cancer, an accompanying editorial warned that
elevated IGF-1 levels are also associated with greater than any
known risk factors for other major cancers, particularly colon and prostate.
This latest evidence is not unexpected. Higher
rates of breast and colon cancer have been reported in patients
with gigantism
(acromegaly) who have high IGF-1 blood levels. Other studies
have also shown that administration of IGF-1 to elderly female
primates
causes marked breast enlargement and proliferation of breast
tissue, that IGF-1 is a potent stimulator of human breast cells
in tissue
culture, that it blocks the programmed self-destruction of
breast cancer cells, and enhances their growth and invasiveness.
These various reports, however, appear surprisingly unaware
of the fact that the entire U.S. population is now exposed
to high
levels of IGF-1 in dairy products. In February 1995, the Food
and Drug Administration approved the sale of unlabelled milk
from cows
injected with Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth
hormone, rBGH, to increase milk production. As detailed in
a January 1996
report in the prestigious International Journal of Health Services,
rBGH milk differs from natural milk chemically, nutritionally,
pharmacologically and immunologically, besides being contaminated
with pus and antibiotics resulting from mastitis induced by
the biotech hormone. More critically, rBGH milk is supercharged
with
high levels of abnormally potent IGF-1, up 10 times the levels
in natural milk and over 10 times more potent. IGF-1 resists
pasteurization, digestion by stomach enzymes, and is well absorbed
across the intestinal
wall. Still unpublished
1987 Monsanto tests, disclosed by FDA in summary form in 1990,
revealed that statistically significant growth stimulating
effects were induced in organs of adult rats by feeding IGF-1
at low
dose levels for only two weeks. Drinking rBGH milk would thus
be expected
to significantly increase IGF-1 blood levels and consequently
to increase risks of developing breast cancer and promoting
its invasiveness.
Faced with escalating rates of breast,
colon, prostate and other avoidable cancers, FDA should withdraw its approval
of
rBGH milk,
whose sale benefits only Monsanto while posing major public
health risks for the entire U.S. population. A Congressional
investigation of FDA's abdication of responsibility is well
overdue.
SOURCE: Press Release: July 8, 1998 by the Cancer Prevention Coalition
CONTACT: Samuel S. Epstein,
M.D., Professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine
at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, Chicago,
and Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition, 312-996-2297; epstein@uic.edu
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