CHICAGO, June 21 /PRNewswire/ -- The following was released today by
Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., Professor Environmental Medicine, University of
Illinois School of Public Health and Chairman of Cancer Prevention Coalition:

    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, besides
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  Still unpublished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, besides 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.

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