Posted: 27 October 2008
From: Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum., Bettym19@mindspring.com
To: Donna.Griffith-Sackey-foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk
Date: Fri, Oct 24, 2008 6:09 pm
Subject: Review and ban aspartame: Food Standards: Your ref: ( ADB 33/265 L)
Dear Ms. Griffith-Sackey,
Thank you for your letter. I understand this information will go to the European Food Safety Authority
Ms. Griffith-Sackey, don't tell people aspartame is safe. If its safe I've taken 50,000 cases of a non-existing disease and doctors have set up detoxification centers for no reason and foolishly authored medical texts such as Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic and Excitotoxins: the Taste That Kills for no reason. They identify deadly aspartame reactions and diseases while you tell us the same poison is safe. Some have taken care of aspartame victims in the trenches of medical practice for years.
Do you believe we have volunteer operations in 39 nations to warn about a safe product? What about the three Congressional hearings on aspartame toxicity? Or the world-renowned physicians and researchers announcing aspartame is a toxic carcinogen? Or the thousands of victims whose lives were damaged or ended by this addictive drug?
Thousands developed aspartame neurodegenerative diseases and cancers, and tens of thousands of babies perished in their mother's wombs because it's an abortifacient. Death is named on the FDA list of 92 aspartame symptoms, and seizures and blindness, and sexual dysfunction. But you say: Believe the manufacturers, and ignore medical evidence.
Food Standards should protect and warn us. Certainly Food Standards is no place for industry propaganda rebutted for decades as false. Here it is again: http://www.dorway.com/offasprt.html
I met with the European Union and explained that not all peer reviewed studies are credible They used them anyway. Example: If we have lunch and we each add a capsule of aspartame to our tea, then I wrote it up and had it peer reviewed as a study showing we didn't have seizures, what would it prove? Just that I was desperate to manufacture false evidence. Call it the Donna Griffith Sackey study. Outrageous, of course, but the manufacturers with money, power and influence regularly get their nonsense published in journals - and did. I refer to the Rowen Study where 16 of 18 people were given anti-seizure medication before taking aspartame: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/abuse/seizures.html
This shows how frightened the producers were that one might have a seizure on a single dose of aspartame. The subjects received one capsule of aspartame for a one-day study. Then the manufacturer used power & influence to get this one-shot fiasco peer reviewed. See many other hopelessly flawed studies, showing how the aspartame industry rigs research.
Originally, a 52 week study on 7 infant monkeys: five had grand mal seizures and one died. http://www.mpwhi.com/monkey_study.htm Seizures are listed 5 times on the 92 symptom FDA list. Should we be the monkeys now? This was used pivotal in the approval process.
http://www.mpwhi.com/92_aspartame_symptoms.pdf Dr. Richard Wurtman had 80 seizure cases, was enough to take it off the market, and the Community Nutrition Institute in Washington, D.C. petitioned the FDA to ban it. Ignored.
FDA originally wanted Searle indicted for fraud and revoked aspartame's petition for approval. FDA gave its loyalty to the manufacturer, and nothing happened. Today the pharmaceuticals supply over half FDAs funding. FDA works for the drug makers. http://www.mpwhi.com/fda_petition1.doc
Dr. H. J. Roberts 1,036 page text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, explains how it interacts adversely with anti-seizure medication. Now big pharma adds aspartame to seizure meds like Ketacal. According to a Pfizer whistle-blower, when Dilantin was reformulated they added aspartame. It's a bigger capsule, orange & white. The report is that seizure victims began to have common aspartame symptoms such as vision problems from the liberated methyl alcohol, male sexual dysfunction and more seizures.
For years pilots have complained of aspartame seizures. Nurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D. prepared a pilot alert: http://www.mpwhi.com/pilot_aspartame_alert.htm to warn pilots off the toxin.
Manufacturers rig research to hide any problem aspartame triggers. It triggers Parkinson's disease and interacts with L-Dopa and other Parkinson medications. So Schwartz Pharmaceutical added aspartame to Parcopa http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/abuse/parkinson.html
Additional on scientific research and industry abuse, several cases: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/abuse
Read how aspartame got approved in England and the original in the Guardian about it. http://www.mpwhi.com/how_aspartame_got_approved_in_england.htm
Food Standards in England relied on FDA, and FDA revoked the petition for approval.
In this letter are facts on how aspartame was marketed in the US through the chicanery of Don Rumsfeld after the FDA had revoked the aspartame petition. He was CEO of G. D. Searle, the producer. http://www.mpwhi.com/letter_to_a_n_kim_california_ach.htm
The aspartame industry uses a front group called ILSI. When Dr. Richard Wurtman at MIT wanted to do seizures studies on aspartame the manufacturer warned him that if he did his research funding would cease. They didn't deny this charge. Read the 8 month investigation by United Press International. http://www.mpwhi.com/upi_1987_aspartame_report.pdf Today MIT gets their research funds and Dr. Wurtman speaks no more on aspartame. That's the way they play the game.
Dr. Ralph Walton's research showed that an astounding 92% of independent scientific peer reviewed studies show aspartame problems: http://www.dorway.com/peerrev.html Walton further shows that if you eliminate 6 studies where the FDA was involved and 1 pro-aspartame summary, 100% of the independent studies show the problems.
The natural question is: Why do industry-funded studies show its safe? Follow the money! But without industry funding, here are 167 showing adverse effects. Click this document and see these studies and note this was four years: 1986-90. All these and Dr. Walton's studies should be in your review. http://www.mpwhi.com/adverse_effects_of_aspartame.htm What's the chance of 167 studies on aspartame showing problems being wrong? If ten studies showed aspartame is unsafe it should be banned. When 167 studies show the problems is there a question in your mind? This is a listing by the government, health & Human Services and the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Woodrow Monte's peer reviewed report, Aspartame, Methanol and the Public Interest is always left out. This time it needs to be included: http://dorway.com/dorwblog/?page_id=1000
When independent researchers learn the truth they're pounced upon by the aspartame industry, often with the most specious alibis .The Trocho Study showed the formaldehyde converted from the liberated methyl alcohol embalms living tissue and damages DNA. Damaged DNA can destroy humanity. Here's the study in full: http://www.mpwhi.com/formaldehyde_from_aspartam.pdf
As soon as it was released the NutraSweet industry tried to assassinate the character of Dr. Maria Alemany and reduced his funding. I flew to Barcelona and Dr. Alemany told me "aspartame can kill 200,000 people". I said it probably already has. Consider that it's an abortifacient and I have letters from women who lost as many as 8 babies from it. It triggers fatal neurodegenerative diseases and causes brain tumors and other cancers. Remember an additive by law is supposed to be inert. This is an addictive excitoneuerotoxic carcinogenic drug.
Here is Dr. Alemany's letter to the President of the Hawaii House Committee on Health. http://www.mpwhi.com/hhc-malemany.pdf In this case the industry used Tepley to rebut, who later confessed that he didn't use the right equipment. So this rebuttal needs to be removed from Food Standards web site.
Don Rumsfelds crew at Searle were masters of deception. When the original studies were investigated they were caught excising brain tumors and putting the rats back in the study, then resurrecting them on paper when they died. FDAs audit, the Bressler Report exposed Searles fraud: www.mpwhi.com/bressler_report.pdf
Jerome Bressler told me that as shocking as his report was, FDA deleted the worst 20%, two mice studies. Then FDA refused to release that data to a United States Congressman.
My request through Freedom Of Information Act: http://www.mpwhi.com/fda_gate.htm met a stone wall. In my letter you will see the fraudulent way they study MSG, another toxin. To hide damaging reactions to MSG they used aspartame as the placebo for 25 years, which produces similar damage. Thus they can report that MSG is no worse than a placebo.
The fraud never ends. In the 5/7/1985 Congressional Record Senate pages 5492 to 5519 the National Soft Drink Association in opposing the approval of aspartame, reviewed Searle's study and said:
The aspartame industry from the beginning had to figure out how to get a chemical poison approved as safe. They failed and were exposed over and over again, so they say it's the most tested product in history to make the consumer think it passed the tests. Only if the manufacturers paid for the rigged lab work did this miserable toxin squeak by.
Aspartame is a rat killer. Though it was approved for dry food in 1981, there was a third Congressional hearing 6 years later in 1987 at which Dr. Jacqueline Verrett, FDA toxicologist, testified that it hadn't been proved safe. See her testimony: http://www.mpwhi.com/J_verrett.pdf Said Dr. Verrett: "It would appear that the safety of aspartame and its breakdown products has still not been satisfactorily determined, since many of the flaws cited in these three studies were also present in all of the other studies submitted by Searle."
Aspartame was never proven safe in the US. FDA revoked the petition for approval. It got on the market entirely through the political clout of Don Rumsfeld. No studies were done in the UK. Absolutely no way can you say aspartame is safe.
The impeccable 3-year Ramazzini Studies on 1,800 rats confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that aspartame is, in their words A MULTIPOTENTIAL CARCINOGEN. This was known from the beginning.
FDA toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross' told Congress on 8/1/85 that at least one of Searle's studies "has established beyond ANY REASONABLE DOUBT that aspartame is capable of inducing brain tumors in experimental animals and that this predisposition of it is of extremely high significance. ... In view of these indications that the cancer causing potential of aspartame is a matter that had been established WAY BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT, one can ask: What is the reason for the apparent refusal by the FDA to invoke for this food additive the so-called Delaney Amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act?"
The Delaney Amendment makes it illegal to allow any residues of cancer causing chemicals in foods. In his concluding testimony Gross asked,
While I'm sending a copy to the EFSA keep in mind they were the ones who tried to invalidate the study by saying the rats had respiratory problems. Ajinomoto must be running out of excuses, as they should of known this would never hold up, since respiratory disease is part of the dying process. Dr. Soffritti responded:
So after exposing the EFSA on the issue, why wasn't aspartame banned because its a carcinogen? The study is prestigious, peer reviewed by 7 world experts, followed up by a second study demonstrating that small doses are toxic. Here is a description of those studies
The first ERF study (2005) was conducted on 1800 Sprague-Dawley rats (100-150/per sex/per group) In order to simulate daily human intake, aspartame was added to the standard rat diet in quantities of 5000, 2500, 100, 500, 20, 4, and 0 mg/Kg of body weight. Treatment of the animals began at 8 weeks of age and continued until spontaneous death. The results show that APM causes a statistically significant, dose-related increase of lymphomas/leukemias and malignant tumors of the renal pelvis in females and malignant tumors of peripheral nerves in males. These results demonstrate for the first time that APM is a carcinogenic agent, capable of inducing malignancies at various dose levels, including those lower than the current acceptable daily intake (ADI) for humans (50 mg/kg of body weight in the US, 40 mg/kg of body weight in the EU.
The second ERF study (2007) was conducted on 400 Sprague-Dawley rats (70-95/per sex/per group). In order to simulate daily human intake, aspartame was added to the standard rat diet in quantities of 100, 20, and 0 mg/Kg of body weight. Treatment of the animals began on the 12th day of fetal life until natural death. The results of the second study show an increased incidence of lymphomas/leukemias in female rats with respect to the first study. Moreover, the study shows that when lifespan exposure to APM begins during fetal life, the age at which lymphomas/leukemias develop in females is anticipated. For the first time, a statistically significant increase in mammary cancers in females was also observed in the second study. The results of this transplacental carcinogenicity bioassay not only confirm, but also reinforce the first experimental demonstration of APMs multipotential carcinogenicity.
At least Dr. Koeter of EFSA confessed they were pressured by industry to highjack science. Here's his confession: http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?n=70720-efsa-health-claims-antibiotics He is no longer with EFSA.
The Scientific Committee on Food used industry propaganda and deleted much that I brought them. There was no Committee, just one person made that decision according to OLAF, anti-fraud. Shameless deceit! Now the European Food Safety Authority officiates. See the complete rebuttal: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/scf2002-response.htm
Whenever publicity surges on aspartame's deadly effects, the industry counters to reassure people everything is just fine, even if they're poisoned. Ajinomoto financed a review of the Burdock or Magnuson study, so it's called, to squelch the alarm. Here's the rebuttal: http://www.mpwhi.com/aspartame_and_manufacturer_funded_reviews.htm
47 members of Parliament signed for a ban.
Coke sent a stooge to New Zealand when Diet Coke sales fell. Bernadene Magnuson must have figured her credentials would let her get by lying. She disgraced herself, saying aspartame doesn't get in the blood stream. It's documented in their own research! http://www.mpwhi.com/bernadene_magnuson_aspartame_flack.htm
Thru damage to the mitochondria aspartame interacts with virtually all drugs & vaccines. So they add it to drugs that treat the problems it causes! Fighting fire with napalm!
Headache is #1 on FDA 92 symptom list. A doctor gives Maxalt for relief. Maxalt has aspartame!
Aspartame triggers Parkinson's and interacts severely with L-Dopa. The Parkinsons drug, Parcopa, contains aspartame. A Singulair report relates that it brings suicidal tendencies. It contains aspartame. The 50% phenylalanine in aspartame lowers the seizure threshold and depletes serotonin; profound depression results with psychiatric & behavioral problems including bipolar, schizophrenia, mood swings and suicidal tendencies. A year old child had suicidal tendencies.
Aspartame interacts with "all" antidepressants.
Two European Parliamentarians petitioned WHO to tract sudden death so they could find out why people are dropping dead. Aspartame triggers an irregular heart rhythm, interacts with all cardiac medication, damages the cardiac conduction system and causes sudden cardiac death. Here are two reports by eminent physicians: http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_and_arrhythmias.htm and http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_msg_scd.htm
Aspartame has no value or use except as a poison.
It's pushed on diabetics when, in fact, aspartame can precipitate diabetes, simulates and aggravates diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy, destroys the optic nerve, causes diabetic convulsions, and interacts with insulin. The methyl alcohol it liberates converts into formaldehyde and makes them lose their limbs.
It's marketed many times a diet product when, it produces carbohydrate craving, bringing obesity. Dr. Atkins called it low cal weight gain.
It causes polychemical sensitivity syndrome because once on aspartame you can become chemically hypersensitive for life. It interacts with other toxins aggravating the situation. Even though the companies were powerful enough to get out of some suits, RICO (racketeering) lawsuits were filed against Monsanto, NutraSweet and the American Diabetes Assn. for pushing this poison with full knowledge of its consequences.
Aspartame also triggers birth defects and mental retardation. This Report For Schools has articles from eminent physicians on aspartame destroying the brains of our children. http://www.mpwhi.com/report_on_aspartame_and_children.htm So a recent report places autism at 10%.
CONCLUSION: The aspartame industry is dedicated to deception. It wasn't proved safe in original studies, Why think its safe today? Those studies motivated FDA to ask the Department of Justice to indict G. D. Searle for submitting fraudulent research. Title 18, Section 1001. Searle knew they would lose so their lawyers hired both U.S. Prosecutors and the statute of limitations expired.
FDA was deluged with thousands of aspartame complaints so they referred the victims to the AIDS Hotline, then slammed the complaint window, which had logged more citizen reactions than all other additives combined: 75% of all complaints.
Using mock science the industry funds front groups to spin lies and fight truth, ILSI.
Of course, advertising money carefully placed yields a rich harvest of free publicity from compliant media. They fund professional organizations the world over to defend them and push the toxin such as the American Diabetes Assoc., American Dietetics and MS Society.
While in the congressional hearings eminent researchers and physicians spoke out about the deadliness of aspartame, the paid professional organizations defended the company. Because aspartame is addictive the companies have bottomless checkbooks and use influence and power to keep the public stumbled.
Researchers who won't go along, like Wurtman, are threatened or their careers terminated. Today MIT gets research funds but Wurtman no longer speaks out about aspartame.
Without conscience they refuse to warn pregnant women of the death-threat it brings their Infants, a plea Dr. Louis Elsas, Professor of Pediatics at Emory University made to Congress. http://www.mpwhi.com/louis_elsas_testifying_to_congress.htm
After I lectured twice in England their attorneys intimidated the press to prevent further publicity.
They smother governments & legislators with lies to bury truth. Dr. Koeter admitted that they pressured the EFSA to highjack science to save their poison.
Government agencies become puppets to their demands. In the US the revolving door is notorious and the same FDA who fought aspartame now assures the public saying it's safe.
After a lecture tour in New Zealand and sales of Diet Coke and other aspartame products went down Coke stooge, Bernadene Magnuson arrived to fill the airwaves with lies and denies.
After near three decades Rumsfeld's plague of epidemic bipolar, vision destruction, MS, lupus, obesity, diabetes, seizures, neurodegenerative diseases, birth defects, sexual dysfunction, infertility, brain tumors, other cancers and dark depression enshrouding countless lives, its time to call HALT.
What will happen if aspartame is banned? Dr. Morgan Raiford said if victims of aspartame are warned while vision is in the wet stage it can return and sight be regained. Many who are legally blind will see again.
Aspartame has caused an epidemic of fibromyalgia because it hardens the synovial fluids.
People crippled and in pain will walk again. My files are filled with cases of such recoveries.
Aspartame disease mimics and can precipitate MS. Many will walk out of wheelchairs like Cori Brackett, co-founder of Sound and Fury Productions, who made the aspartame documentary, Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World. Eight months later her huge lesion was all but gone. Aspartame depletes serotonin and triggers psychiatric and behavioral problems. Experts say mental hospitals are full of patients who are only aspartame victims. One of my husband's friends, a brilliant man and a Diet Coke addict, hung himself, To make matters worse they give them psychiatric drugs which interact with aspartame. Imagine so many of thousands would be normal again.
Women who couldn't get pregnant, not knowing aspartame stimulates prolactin, changing the menses, will hold babies in their laps, normal babies without birth defects.
Millions who suffer seizures from aspartame will recover.
Aspartame victims of headaches, high blood pressure and other symptoms on the FDA list would leave these sufferings.
Diabetics who have all these symptoms of neuropathy and retinopathy would not only normalize but many will find they didn't even have diabetes.
A rampage of sexual dysfunction sweeps the world and sperm counts have dropped 50% in 50 years. Aspartame destroys a man's ability and a woman's pleasure, stealing joy from our lives a diet sip at a time. Imagine a world without Viagra ads!
The obesity epidemic will diminish.
Children with behavioral problems, loss of IQ and other notorious symptoms will improve.
Birth defects, often a life-in-hard-labor sentence for parent and child, will decline.
People have a right to life, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If banning aspartame would save the lives of a few it should be done.
It will save the health and lives of millions of people and dissolve disability, pain and suffering throughout the world.
Many have lost their jobs, their homes, their marriages and families from this dread chemical demon. Pilots are losing their occupation from aspartame seizures. Don't people deserve safety in the air?
Athletes fall dead from aspartame's damage of the cardiac conduction system. This nightmare will end. Diane Fleming's athletic husband died from aspartame. His last drink with Creatine did the deadly deed according to a report which aspartame also interacts with. She's serving 30 and 20 years in a Virginia prison, wrongly convicted of poisoning him, though she passed 3 lie detector tests.
Aspartame triggers chemical hypersensitization, polychemical sensitivity, an illness from which there is no recovery. Perfume, paint, cleaners, deodorants, thousands of normal and benign scents trigger extreme allergic reactions. A 50 year old friend, a painter, just died from it, but he was disabled for several years in an ever tighter spiral of decline. Its death by degrees.
How do I know this? Countless victims have written me how they were going to physicians for years and couldn't get well, but quit aspartame and so did their disabilities. I opened the door one day and a woman fell in my arms. She said, "I was blind and now I can see". The calls kept coming as all kinds of medical disabilities disappeared. For over 17 years I've crusaded to save lives and tell the world about this poison. Don't avoid, discredit, neglect or ignore the mountain of valid testimony form eminent medical authorities that you're putting death in your mouth, no matter how sweet the taste.
Aspartame maker's don't want it banned for two big reasons: It will close their goldmine, and the world will know what poisoned them. Keep in mind, if aspartame were safe none of the shenanigans the aspartame industry uses would be necessary, and all the tests would prove it safe as rain. They wouldn't have to fix studies, pay off prosecutors and buy defenders. They wouldn't need a research front group to dispense research funds to those who will say aspartame is safe. It wouldn't be necessary. When thousands and thousands of brochures exposing aspartame were given out some years ago the owner of the facility said people were picking them up by the handfuls. Their friends, families and associates were getting off aspartame and finding all sorts of maladies were disappearing. So many thousands got well it prompted the article: "The sick woke up well." Let's give the rest of the world that opportunity.
More studies will be sent before the 30th. Please print out these URL's and read these reports and studies. Remember aspartame is genetically engineered with E. coli bacteria, a toxic sludge pressed into a white powder. They put this poison in children's vitamins and drugs.
Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum.
Founder, Mission Possible World Health International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770-242-2599
E-Mail: BettyM19@mindspring.com
http://www.wpwhi.com
http://www.whno.net
http://www.dorway.com
Aspartame Toxicity Center: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame
At 09:58 AM 10/10/2008, Donna.Griffith-Sackey@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk wrote:
Dear Dr Martini
Further to my email dated 12 June 2008 which advised you that the Agency was still considering the issues raised in your original email dated 10 May (and the subsequent information received), we are now in a position to respond.
We have reviewed thoroughly the information that you forwarded to us so that we could identify whether there were any data that we were not previously aware of. Although there were some references that we had not previously seen, when the database is taken as a whole our assessment of aspartame remains unchanged; we believe aspartame is safe at currently permitted levels. We are further reviewing Dr Roberts' work on aspartame as this may help to direct the design and conduct of future studies.
In relation to our proposal to EFSA to conduct further research on aspartame, I am pleased to confirm that EFSA has announced an initiative in cooperation with its Advisory forum to address this public concern. As a first step, EFSA has recently made a call for data to determine what new scientific evidence and other information is available subsequent to the last evaluation of aspartame by the former Scientific Committee on Food (SCF) in 2002. I have provided a link to this request below:
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/EFSA/efsa_locale-1178620753812_1211902099309.htm
Should you wish to provide data to be considered, please provide this information to EFSA by 31 October 2008. However, we will ensure that the data you have already provided to us will be forwarded to EFSA to be included in this review.
Best wishes
Donna Griffith-Sackey
Food Standards Agency
Novel Foods, Additives and Supplements Division
Food Standards Agency (FSA)