Sweet News

Saccharin seems pretty safe

Saccharin appeared to be on the way out three years ago. A Canadian research team had just reported that "large amounts" of the artificial sweetener caused bladder cancer in rats. It hardly seemed to matter that the "large amounts" were the equivalent of 800 eight-ounce glasses of diet soda per human adult per day over a lifetime. The Food and Drug Administration ordered a general ban on the use of saccharin in food or drink after mid-1977. Reason: the Delaney Clause in the 1958 Food and Drug Act prohibited any food additive that causes cancer in laboratory animals.

The ban created an uproar among the millions of Americans--particularly diabetics and the obese--who use the sweetener. Rats are not people, they said, and anyway the risk seemed small. Congress responded by putting off the ban for 18 months, then delayed it again while consumers, only slightly concerned, continued their saccharin binge. Last week they heard some sweet news. Two new studies gave saccharin a nearly clean bill of health and probably ensured that the FDA ban would never take effect.

One of the studies, conducted by Dr. Alan Morrison and Julie Buring of the Harvard School of Public Health and reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, focused on the dietary habits of 592 bladder-cancer patients and a comparable control group of people in good health. No significant difference was found in the amount of saccharin consumed by the two groups, and thus no link between the sweetener and cancer. A similar conclusion, published in Science, was reached in a six-city study of 367 bladder-cancer patients and as many healthy subjects carried out by Drs. Ernest Wynder and Steven Stellman of the American Health Foundation. These reports reinforced the negative findings last December of a National Cancer Institute study involving 3,000 people.

Still, even the scientists involved in the latest tests continue to urge caution. In a New England Journal editorial, Dr. Robert Hoover, who reported the National Cancer Institute results, notes that the tests showed only that saccharin had not caused any of the current bladder tumors in patients. Because the sweetener has been in widespread use only since the 1960s, it could have still undiscovered long-range carcinogenic effects on the bladder and other organs. Thus, Hoover warns, "any use by nondiabetic children or pregnant women, heavy use by young women of child-bearing age and excessive use by anyone are ill-advised."

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