Putting Warnings in Context
Terry H. Schwadron
July 16, 2023
Even for those of us who believe in science, the announcement this week that artificial sweeteners may increase cancer risks is asking a lot of trust in some shaky conclusions.
Indeed, it’s just the kind of disputed announcement that will encourage distrust for totally unrelated findings about health and medicine studies or climate and environmental work or other potential risks we face.
Basically, based on two studies, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that aspartame, a popular artificial sweetener found in thousands of products like diet sodas and sugar-free gum, should be categorized as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”
Nevertheless, the international agency said it was fine — within limits.
Our own Federal Drug Administration lined up with Big Beverage companies to push back, saying that five substantial FDA studies aince the 1970s have said aspartame is fine.
Even the WHO recommendation of 40 milligrams of aspartame per body weight per day suggests that someone who weighs 184 pounds could drink up to 33 cans a day and stay within the limits. American Beverage, the trade group, says the typical diet soda has 100 milligrams of aspartame.
Um, 33 sodas a day? Even Donald Trump, a self-professed soda fan a tad over 184 pounds, can’t be inhaling that much.
As Vox noted, nothing happens automatically based on the WHO’s assessment; it’s up to regulators, companies, and consumers to decide how to respond. Experts suggest that no U.S. ban on aspartame is likely, or even any market response to removing an array of aspartame-laden products from supermarket shelves.
The Announcements
It makes one wonder whether we know how to offer these kind of grave announcements. The basic presentation arrives laden with fear, of course, only later to find out that it probably doesn’t affect most people. Still, cancer remains among the ugliest words in the human lexicon, and so even the hint or a notion of a possibility that some substance is being sold widely without warnings sets off the over-cautious.
At the same time, our professed individualism — the right to drink whatever cancer-causing agent we choose is something that American business and our most fervent I-can-do-what-I-want defenders will take to their deaths, figuratively or literally.
Thus, we have noticeable pushback to covid vaccines and now, candidates for president who insist that all vaccines are bad policies from a government and a political elite that want to control your lives. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was all but laughed out of the city for “nannyism” for suggesting a limit on oversized soda drinking as a preventive health measure.
We want health, but we also want our individual version of The Good Life on our own terms, and rules be damned.
Let’s be clear: Coca-Cola and its rivals only want one thing, for you to enjoy — and buy — as much of their beverages whether they have aspartame as diet substitutes or a hint of cocaine in the form of an extract of the coca leaf, as in decades past.
The WHO cited two studies, both of which have drawn scientific criticism. A French study followed 100,000 people over years and determined a slightly higher incidence of cancers among those reporting consistent use of aspartame, but the study was observational, and its methodology was questioned to determine that aspartame was the cause. The other involved mice and reached conclusions opposite from U.S. studies with animals.
The big finding was that more study is needed. Nevertheless, alarm first, then a call for more study.
Bad Habits
We should be used to it by now.
That second cup of coffee is okay for the moment, but a third maybe not a good idea. Meat is fine, uncles you eat too much, or if you worry about the effects of our collective livestock-raising practices. More fruit and vegetables are desirable unless they have too much sugar.
So too with donning or shunning covid masks or the new resistance to wearing a mask if the air is filled with smoke from Canadian wildfires. How many more years does it take for public understanding of the dangers of rusting pipes carrying drinking water or lead paint chips in neglected poor housing or the presence of “forever chemical” PFAs in everyday usage — only now being banned as carcinogenic.
Meanwhile, when we have measurable public health risks from too many guns in the wrong hands, we decide that permission for colonial militias is a more important consideration than protecting children in schools.
The swirl of understanding when we expect to embrace communal dangers or resist them based on personal taste is mind-bending.
Life is a risk, whether crossing the street or balancing your intake or trying to build out a complete thought without being told about alternative “facts” that should govern.
A word of advice to the fearmongering on all fronts is to bring down the urgency just a tad. If we have new information — scientific, economic, environmental — to add to discussion, can we please do so in a manner that provides context and doesn’t start with setting people’s hair on fire.
It’s the only way to build trust in our institutions.
##