Get ready for an earful about the health risks of Diet Coke, Trident gum, Equal, and other sugar-free items.
准备好听一听关于健怡可乐，三叉戟口香糖，平等，和其他无糖食品的健康风险。

There’s some astonishing news in the world of food safety: Aspartame, a common artificial sweetener used in a wide range of foods and beverages, is about to be declared a carcinogen by a leading global health agency.
在食品安全领域有一些令人震惊的消息: 阿斯巴甜，一种广泛应用于食品和饮料中的常见人工甜味剂，即将被一家领先的全球卫生机构宣布为致癌物质。

In mid-July, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) — a branch of the World Health Organization (WHO) — plans to release the results of a fresh review of safety data on the product. According to Reuters, the agency will declare that aspartame is “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” A separate WHO committee that develops recommendations on how much of a product is safe (the Joint WHO and Food and Agriculture Organization’s Expert Committee on Food Additives) plans to simultaneously release guidelines aimed at answering consumers’ questions about how much aspartame they can safely consume.
七月中旬，国际癌症研究机构(IARC)——世界卫生组织(WHO)的一个分支机构——计划公布对该产品安全数据的最新审查结果。据路透社报道，该机构将宣布阿斯巴甜“可能对人类致癌”另一个世界卫生组织委员会(世界卫生组织和联合国粮食及农业组织食品添加剂专家委员会)计划同时发布指南，旨在回答消费者关于他们可以安全食用多少阿斯巴甜的问题。

The news has lots of consumers spitting out their diet sodas — and it also has a lot of people confused about what to do with what feels like yet another wave of confusing and conflicting guidance about a food product.
这个消息让很多消费者吐出他们的减肥苏打水ーー也让很多人感到困惑，不知道该如何应对又一波有关食品的令人困惑和相互矛盾的指导。

As we try to figure out what to add to and ban from our shopping carts, it’s worth understanding aspartame’s path from the lab to our refrigerators.
当我们试图找出添加什么和禁止从我们的购物车，这是值得了解的阿斯巴甜的路径从实验室到我们的冰箱。

It’s also worth examining what might set an IARC statement about a product’s safety apart from the assessments made by other agencies consumers trust with these decisions.
同样值得研究的是，除了消费者信任的其他机构所做的评估外，IARC 关于产品安全性的声明是如何确定的。

A history of scary, conflicting, and hard-to-trust guidance on aspartame
关于阿斯巴甜的可怕的，矛盾的，难以信任的指南

It can be hard for attentive consumers to know who to trust to weigh in on aspartame’s safety.
细心的消费者可能很难知道该相信谁来评价阿斯巴甜的安全性。

That’s because since its earliest days, the product’s manufacturers — and the industry that now reaps enormous profits from its sale — have sought to influence its approval for consumer use.
这是因为，自产品问世以来，制造商(以及如今从销售中获得巨额利润的行业)一直试图影响消费者使用该产品的审批。

When American pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle first tried to get aspartame approved by the US US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1973, it was denied: Independent scientists alleged the product could cause a range of neurologic disorders, and some alleged the company hadn’t been entirely above-board in its safety testing.
1973年，当美国制药公司 G.D。 Searle 首次试图获得美国食品和药物管理局(FDA)的批准时，阿斯巴甜被否决了: 独立科学家声称该产品可能导致一系列神经系统紊乱，一些人声称该公司在安全测试中并没有完全光明正大。

In January 1981, Ronald Reagan became the US president. His transition team included then-CEO of G.D. Searle, one Donald Rumsfeld. Although an independent FDA board warned that May that the drug might induce brain tumors, the agency’s newly installed director overruled them, and the FDA approved the product for consumer use that July.
1981年1月，罗纳德•里根(Ronald Reagan)成为美国总统。他的过渡团队包括当时 GD 的首席执行官瑟尔，一个唐纳德 · 拉姆斯菲尔德。虽然独立的 FDA 委员会警告说，五月的药物可能诱发脑肿瘤，该机构的新任主任否决了他们，并批准该产品的消费者使用该七月。

In the 1990s, scientists began to raise concerns about aspartame’s safety. A neurologist published a study suggesting the product might play a role in causing brain cancer in humans, and the FDA’s own toxicologist raised concerns about the product’s cancer-causing potential.
上世纪90年代，科学家们开始对阿斯巴甜的安全性提出担忧。一位神经学家发表了一篇研究报告，指出这种产品可能会导致人类患上脑癌，FDA 自己的毒理学家也对这种产品的致癌潜力表示担忧。

To better characterize the drug’s risk, the Ramazzini Institute, an Italian nonprofit research laboratory, began studying its effects on rats in 1997.
为了更好地描述这种药物的风险，意大利非营利性研究实验室拉马齐尼研究所(Ramazzini Institute)于1997年开始研究其对老鼠的影响。

This is a common first step in determining the safety of synthetic products produced for human consumption. But this study was particularly high-quality in that it included thousands of rats and gave them a range of aspartame doses.
这是确定为人类消费而生产的合成产品安全性的一个常见的第一步。但是这项研究的质量特别高，因为它包括了成千上万只老鼠，并给它们一定剂量的阿斯巴甜。

The purpose was to determine whether more aspartame led to more outcomes, a finding that would be strongly suggestive that aspartame was a cause of those outcomes and not just a coincidental exposure.
目的是确定是否更多的阿斯巴甜导致更多的结果，这一发现将强烈暗示，阿斯巴甜是这些结果的原因，而不只是一个巧合的暴露。

What the Italian scientists found did not look good: The rats that consumed aspartame had higher levels of malignant tumors in multiple organs, including kidneys, breasts, and the nervous system. These findings were noted even at low doses of aspartame — exposures similar to what the US and European authorities consider the acceptable daily intake of the product.
意大利科学家发现的情况并不乐观: 食用阿斯巴甜的老鼠在多个器官中有较高水平的恶性肿瘤，包括肾脏、乳房和神经系统。即使在低剂量的阿斯巴甜(与美国和欧洲当局认为每日可接受的阿斯巴甜摄入量相似)下，这些发现也被注意到。

The study generated reams of controversy that have played out in the scientific literature ever since, with multiple groups of scientists across the globe independently re-evaluating the tissue samples from the Italian studies and coming up with their own conclusions about what they showed.
这项研究在科学文献中引起了巨大的争议，全球各地的多组科学家独立地重新评估了意大利研究中的组织样本，并得出了他们自己的结论。

Interestingly, many of the scientists who disputed the Ramazzini Institute’s findings were funded by industry interests that profit from aspartame’s consumption: the American Beverage Association; Ajinomoto, an aspartame supplier; and the Calorie Control Council, to name just a few.
有趣的是，许多对拉马齐尼研究所的发现提出异议的科学家都是由从阿斯巴甜消费中获利的行业利益集团资助的: 美国饮料协会、阿斯巴甜供应商味之素(Ajinomoto)以及卡路里控制委员会(Calorie Control Council)等等。

The upshot here is not that you need to launch all of your diet soda directly into the sun — at least, not yet. The guidance to come may yet indicate that there’s some amount of the product that’s safe to consume.
这样做的结果并不是说你需要把所有的无糖汽水直接放到太阳底下，至少现在还不需要。未来的指导方针可能会指出，有一些产品是安全的消费。

Plus, to live on this planet is to routinely balance our desire for delight with the annoying reality that many fun things have some kind of health risk attached.
此外，生活在这个星球上是为了平衡我们对快乐的渴望和恼人的现实，许多有趣的事情有一些健康风险。

But consumers are entitled to have all the safety information companies do when making decisions about which health risks are worth taking. And the industry that produces and profits from aspartame has made complete information hard for consumers to get.
但消费者有权获得公司在决定哪些健康风险值得采取时提供的所有安全信息。生产和利用阿斯巴甜的行业使得消费者很难获得完整的信息。

We deserve more transparency — and there’s a good chance the IARC’s guidance will at least achieve that.
我们理应获得更大的透明度ーー国际癌症研究机构的指导至少很有可能做到这一点。

Why the IARC’s guidance is especially authoritative
为什么 IARC 的指南特别权威

If aspartame’s safety has been under discussion for such a long time, why is IARC only making a statement about it now? Although that’s not entirely clear, experts say that the way IARC conducts its evaluations gives its assessments a particularly high level of integrity.
如果阿斯巴甜的安全性已经讨论了这么长时间，为什么 IARC 现在才发表声明？尽管这还不完全清楚，但专家们说，IARC 进行评估的方式使其评估具有特别高的完整性。

That means it’s worth paying attention to the agency’s take on product safety.
这意味着值得关注该机构对产品安全的看法。

In June, a group of authors from the Ramazzini Institute published a new paper describing a reanalysis of their original results using some new WHO tumor classifications. The study results “confirm and reinforce” their previous findings, write the authors.
6月，来自拉马齐尼研究所的一组作者发表了一篇新论文，描述了使用一些新的世卫组织肿瘤分类对他们的原始结果进行重新分析。作者写道，研究结果“证实和加强”了他们以前的发现。

It’s still not clear whether this study, or some other new science, is the reason for the IARC’s announcement.
目前还不清楚这项研究，或者其他一些新的科学，是 IARC 宣布的原因。

But whatever the reason for IARC’s timing, its assessment is not subject to the kinds of industry conflicts of interest that pose challenges to the FDA, or the analogous European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), said Erik Millstone, a longtime scholar of food safety policy and professor emeritus of science policy at the University of Sussex in England.
但是，不管国际癌症研究机构选择这个时机的原因是什么，它的评估并不受那些对 FDA 或类似的欧洲食品安全局(EFSA)构成挑战的行业利益冲突的影响，埃里克 · 米尔斯通(Erik milstone)说。米尔斯通长期研究食品安全政策和英国名誉教授的科学政策萨塞克斯大学。

When these other agencies approved aspartame, they did it “on the basis of corporate data, most of which wasn’t in the public domain,” said Millstone. In a letter to the EFSA, he quoted from the agency’s own statements indicating it considered unpublished data in its assessment.
米尔斯顿说，当这些其他机构批准阿斯巴甜时，他们是“根据公司数据批准的，其中大部分数据不属于公共领域”。在写给 EFSA 的一封信中，他引用了该机构自己的声明，表示在其评估中考虑了未发表的数据。

On the other hand, he said, the IARC is more selective in its use of unpublished, confidential commercial data, and it takes greater care to exclude people with conflicts of interest from contributing to its evaluations.
另一方面，他说，IARC 在使用未公开的、机密的商业数据时更有选择性，并且更加注意排除那些有利益冲突的人参与其评估。

A few years ago, Millstone and a co-author looked closely at how the European Food Safety Authority had weighed the 154 studies on aspartame safety when it looked to assess the product in 2013. About half of the studies favored aspartame’s safety and about half indicated it might do harm.
几年前，米尔斯顿和一位合著者仔细研究了欧洲食品安全局(European Food Safety Authority)在2013年评估阿斯巴甜产品时对154项阿斯巴甜安全性研究的权衡情况。大约一半的研究支持阿斯巴甜的安全性，大约一半的研究表明它可能有害。

The agency had judged all of the harm-suggesting studies — but only a quarter of the safety-affirming studies — to be “unreliable,” wrote the authors. And the agency had applied looser quality standards to the studies suggesting safety than it had to the studies suggesting harm.
作者写道，该机构认为所有的危害性研究(提出建议的研究)都是“不可靠的”，但只有四分之一的安全性确认研究。该机构对提示安全性的研究采用了较为宽松的质量标准，而对提示危害性的研究则采用了较为宽松的质量标准。

Agency reviewers pushed back against Millstone’s assessment. And in any case, aspartame has remained on the European market.
该机构的审查人员反驳了米尔斯顿的评估。无论如何，阿斯巴甜仍然留在欧洲市场上。

Millstone is not alone in thinking that IARC has higher standards for assessing product safety than other consumer product agencies. A senior scientist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest independently evaluated the European Food Safety Agency’s aspartame approval process and judged the agency’s conclusions were “not sound and not supported by the science; they contradict established criteria and principles by IARC.”
米尔斯通并不是唯一一个认为 IARC 在评估产品安全性方面比其他消费品机构有更高标准的人。公共利益科学中心的一位资深科学家独立评估了欧洲食品安全局(European Food Safety Agency)对阿斯巴甜的审批过程，认为该机构的结论“不合理，也没有科学依据; 它们与 IARC 确立的标准和原则相抵触”

“In the early 1970s, US standards were noticeably higher than European standards,” said Millstone. “But over time, the FDA has been increasingly subordinated to commercial interests.”
“上世纪70年代初，美国的标准明显高于欧洲,”米尔斯通表示。“但随着时间的推移，FDA 越来越屈从于商业利益。”

The FDA has rules about who can serve on its advisory committees that are aimed at preventing conflicts of interest. However, a recent investigation by ProPublica found that consultants employed by McKinsey worked for the FDA on drug safety monitoring projects while simultaneously working for pharmaceutical companies directly affected by those projects. A recently passed congressional bill aims to reduce such conflicts.
FDA 对于谁可以担任旨在防止利益冲突的咨询委员会成员有规定。然而，ProPublica 最近的一项调查发现，麦肯锡聘请的顾问为 FDA 的药物安全监测项目工作，同时为直接受到这些项目影响的制药公司工作。最近通过的一项国会议案旨在减少此类冲突。

Industry influence in consumer safety agencies means some government agencies have bent over backward to discount unwelcome results, said Millstone. But there’s something else going on that’s even harder to combat, he said: “Institutional inertia.”
米尔斯顿说，行业对消费者安全机构的影响力意味着一些政府机构已经竭尽全力去忽视不受欢迎的结果。但还有一些更难对付的东西正在发生，他说: “制度惯性。”

“These supposedly authoritative institutions are loath to admit that they have ever made a mistake in the past,” he said, “especially if the evidence showing that they’re making a mistake had been available earlier — and they’d ignored it.”
“这些所谓的权威机构不愿承认它们过去曾犯过错误,”他说，“尤其是如果表明它们正在犯错误的证据早就存在，而它们忽视了这一点。”

Consumers may also be tempted to reject information that provokes feelings of fear or regret — to clap hands over ears in a living embodiment of the “hear no evil” emoji — and that’s natural.
消费者可能还会拒绝那些会引起恐惧或遗憾的信息ーー用手捂住耳朵，这是“不听邪恶”表情符号的活生生体现ーー这是很自然的。

But if you’re a person who wants to make decisions based on high-quality information, the IARC’s statement will be one to watch.
但是，如果你是一个希望基于高质量信息做出决定的人，IARC 的声明值得关注。

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