Posted: 05 November 2009
Aspartame is the most controversial sweetener in world history. The wars before it was approved
and afterwards are legend. Only once in history had the FDA attempted indictment of a
pharmaceutical company. In the aspartame case both US Prosecutors were recruited by the defense team so they jumped ship and the statute of limitations expired. The outcry of people
poisoned in the USA was so loud there were 3 congressional hearings, but not until 1985
because Senator Orrin Hatch kept them from happening as long as he could. He was on Monsanto's payroll and it's believed he is the reason a bill to put a moratorium on aspartame
and have NIH do independent studies was killed. The studies were to be on the problems
seen in the population such as drug interaction, behavioral problems, especially in children, seizures, and how aspartame damages the fetus.
Citizen operations sprang up to warn the public: first Aspartame Victims And Their Friends and now Mission Possible International, a non-profit operation in 40 nations. James McDonald heads such an organization: UK Aspartame Awareness. If aspartame were safe would these operations exist? Would Detox Centers exist? Would cases of the sick and dying be multiplying three decades later? Textbooks by world-renowned physicians, articles, lectures and movies tell the story of the product Dr. Maria Alemany said could kill 200 million people. Independent studies, not financed or influenced by industry, show the problems.
If anyone asked if methanol is a severe metabolic poison, the answer would be yes. Likewise, if someone asked if a neurotoxin or excitotoxin is a poison the answer would be yes, If asked if diketopiperazine, a brain tumor agent, is a poison the answer would be yes. Yet, aspartame contains all these poisons, and can be described as an addictive, excitoneurotoxic, genetically engineered, carcinogenic drug that interacts with drugs and vaccines and damages the mitochondria, the cell's powerhouses.
Today the world is protesting the Swine Flu Vaccine, which killed 25 children in Britain, which we know of, and thousands of articles on the Internet announce the dangers of adjuvants. Aspartame is also an adjuvant. Experts speak about the damage done to those with mitochondrial dysfunction, so obviously the flu vaccine can harm aspartame victims the most.
The sleazy record of aspartame approval has been told over and over in reports, movies and books so URL's listed below show how it was approved through the political chicanery of Donald Rumsfeld.
You should hear from the experts, those who have worked so hard independently to save as many people as possible. These experts are corporate-neutral of the aspartame industry, unbribed by it, humanitarian physicians and researchers who cry out: "look at the facts and save your life".
I address these issues:
Anecdotal Reports:
Dr. Charles Harris said in 1987: "But the medical profession has a tendency to discard out of hand, and disparagingly, 'anecdotal' information. Digitalis, morphine, quinine, atropine, and the like are chemical derivatives that stem from anecdotal folklore remedies. After all, one anecdote may be a fable, but 1,000 anecdotes can be a biography... A vital function of the medical profession is to sift anecdotes and submit them, if possible, to scientific evaluation. But it all starts as an anecdote."
For 19 years I've been in contact with 50,000 aspartame victims by emails, letters, faxes, phone calls, lectures and other means day and night. I've decided to take Dr. Harris' advice and begin a new scientific evaluation. An aspartame study will be done with physicians getting patients off aspartame and recording the findings the world over. Mission Possible International has been doing this all these years with aspartame victims eliminating the toxin and thusly eliminating the symptoms and many of the diseases known to be triggered by aspartame. More physicians will find out for themselves. The protocol has been written by an aspartame expert and researcher.
Free Methyl Alcohol:
Dr. James Bowen, M.D. on Aspartame & Methanol
"Punditry and Palsies." The Aspartame methanol issue revisited for the non-scientist. The knowingly false and highly contrived punditry position on methanol poisoning from Aspartame is that any such poisoning cannot exist because "Fruit and vegetable juice has as much or more methanol than even a heavy consumer would ever get from Aspartame consumption" This is a fraudulently lying position and, following herein, are several succinct points that the average non scientist might like to review to rebut this vacuous punditry.
"First the high levels of methanol alluded as coming from juices, ie. Tomato, orange and apple juice never existed! Methods were used to make the measurements that could not even detect the minute traces actually present in the juices, so the minimal readings inherent in the method were used instead of the actual, undetectably low values of methanol in the juices. Then punditry methods were used that produced methanol rather than just measuring it: Flame photometry and strong nucleophilic colorimetry. All of this is "science falsely so called"; A major societal problem at present. Flame photometry uses the heat of a flame to excite a substance to emit photons that are then spectrotopically analyzed to measure what is present. Problem is that the heat of a flame breaks down the healthy nutrients of fruit and vegetable products into degradation products commonly known as "smoke". Yes, smoke has carbon monoxide, methanol, formaldehyde and all sorts of organic toxins in it as the result of the thermal breakdown and degradation of the organic matter of which fruits and vegetables are composed.
"From a health standpoint all this points out is that you should not smoke, nor use Aspartame, which is toxicologically very similar to smoke. The use of strong nucleophilic reagents to measure methanol, likewise breaks down fruit and vegetable products to produce it rather than to just measure methanol. Pectin is the source of the methanol in this instance. Pectin is at the heart of most vegetal systems. Just as our heart and blood vessels contain and maintain much of our circulating body fluids in dynamic equilibrium so pectin keeps the plants' fluids in a suitable gel form. Pectin is a large chemical lattice of sugars and alcohols, which serves as a "molecular sponge" for water, which is why it is useful to make jams and jellies. (Likewise, unlike Aspartame, they are noted to be healthful and non-toxic upon thousands of years of widespread human use.) Methanol is the weakest nucleophile, so when much stronger nucleophiles are added to the reagent solution, they readily displace the methanol from the pectin, taking its place in the pectin molecule and pushing the methanol out as nascent, newly manufactured, free methanol. This has no relationship whatsoever to the human experience with fruits and vegetables or their nutritional preparations such as juices, jams or jellies, but does mimic the production of methanol when Aspartame breaks down in drinks., i.e. the Persian Gulf Syndrome.
"In the human digestive tract quite the opposite occurs with pectin. The juice, jam or jelly first enters the human digestion containing, for any practical purposes, no measurable methanol. Upon entering the stomach it is highly acidified by the stomach acid, which is just the opposite of being in a nucleophilically reactive environment. This would be called an electrophilic environment, which would seek then, by chemical reactivity, to remove nucleophilic substances such as alcohols from the pectin. Methyl alcohol, being virtually as weak as water as a nucleophile is not reactive with the stomach acid and is therefore, not thereby removed from the pectin molecule but remains an intrinsic part of it. Ethanol (regular old sipping alcohol) is, however, stripped out of the pectin and absorbed directly through the stomach wall in amounts that are immediately metabolized by the liver with no ill effect, but along with the other ethanol present in juices, rather is protective of methanol poisoning from other sources. This point is but little appreciated by the medical profession in general, but is well known to mechanics, who in the case of accidentally ingesting methanol, will often successfully treat themselves by merely ingesting orange juice and going on about their work with no further problems.
"I encountered a hair raising account of this bleak medical ignorance written by a medical doctor who was working in an isolated, remote refugee camp in southeast Asia. The camp had run out of alcoholic beverages, which are a medically recognized antidote for methanol poisoning. They had lots of orange juice and vitamin nutritionals on hand though, and when one of their medical colleagues was accidentally poisoned by unknowingly ingesting methanol they had the horrible, soul wrenching experience of watching their fellow doctor die the frightening, agonizing, suffering death of methanol poisoning. They believed his fate to be irreparably sealed and that he was doomed because they did not have ethanol nor any other known alcohol dehydrogenase inhibitor available to them to "treat" him with, while in fact, they had in their very hands the orange juice and other vitamin protective factors that would have saved their colleague's life and well being. Such is the medical ignorance engendered and ingrained in the profession by the punditry lies designed to protect the indefensible NutraSweet.
"This depletion of the ethyl alcohol from pectin, ingested in nutritional amounts, leaves its binding sites for alcohol highly unsaturated so the methyl alcohol is held even more tightly as a part of the pectin molecule and throughout the rest of the assimilative digestive processes any other traces of methanol, from any other source, are chemically "sponged up" by the alcohol depleted pectin and thus snatched from the alimentary canal before it can even be absorbed. Thus fruit juice is highly protective of methanol poisoning rather than serving as a source of methanol as the Aspartame pundits would maintain. Moreover the fruit and vegetable juices contain relatively high amounts of folic acid, niacin, vitamin C, and B complex vitamins, which serve to directly detoxify the methanol toxic axis in the metabolic processes and, are therefore also protective.
"On the other hand "NutraSweet" is non nutritional and affords none of the protective factors afforded by fruit and vegetable juices but rather consumes them in it's inherent metabolism leaving the human organism depleted of them on a milligram for milligram basis. This depletion therefore, is made all the more overwhelming to the health by the immense volumes of Aspartame products that some consume. The methanol poisoning from Aspartame is so highly synergized by it's being estherized into the larger, biologically reactive entirety that it ends up an alcohol poisoning about twenty thousand times as potent as the intoxication from ethanol, on a per weight basis, making the drug and toxic effects of even small amounts of Aspartame significant.
"The rest of the story", as horrifying as it may be, is too long to be related here but is available in its entirety in articles by myself and other doctors and scientists on excellent net sites such as http://www.dorway.com, http://www.mpwhi.com, http://www.wnho.net and http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame as well as in Dr. Hyman Robert's excellent medical text. James Bowen, M.D."
Dr. Maria Alemany:
This is a conversation he and I had on the subject and not a report written for publication. It is to help people understand the seriousness of the free methyl alcohol.
Stealthy aspartame release of methanolCorrespondence from Dr M Alemany
"Aspartame is a peptide in which the free carboxyl esterifies methanol. Hydrolysis of this ester bond releases methanol, which is either excreted (breath, urine) or further oxydized to formaldehyde and later to formic acid, which is eliminated with difficulty through the 1C pool system. This scheme uses enzymes that can use several substrates (alcohol oxidases or dehydrogenases, aldehyde oxidases or dehydrogenases) that help us eliminate ethanol (oxidized to acetaldehyde and then to acetate). The main difference being the end product, acetate, easily converted to acetyl-CoA , the main energy intermediate fueling the Krebs cycle. Formiate is not usable for energy and constitutes a dangerous product. Its name comes from its presence in the irritating poison of ants (Latin: formica). However, the principal problem posed by methanol disposal is the intermediate oxidized product, formaldehyde, which has a very high reactivity and reducing power. It binds easily to almost any component of the cell, and the adducts lose function, thus altering the normal function of cells. Theoretically formaldehyde (as its parallel compound acetaldehyde does) can be oxidized to formiate by the aldehyde dehydrogenase, but all chemical reactions are based on molecule-to-molecule encounters, and formaldehyde may meet other proteins (and bind to them) before being caught and processed by the oxidizing enzyme.
"Most polysaccharide methyl esters (such as pectins) may release part of their methanol upon hydrolysis in the intestinal lumen; the methanols thus produced can be further metabolized by the biota or absorbed and processed by poor physiological machinery: absorption, transport to the liver via portal vein; followed by hepatic oxidation and/or lung (breath) and kidney (urine) excretion. "Unfortunately, when methanol enters the bloodstream and the liver could not eliminate most of it (its alcohol dehydrogenase content varies with sex, age, disease and ethnic genetic endowment) other tissular alcohol dehydrogenases convert it into formaldehyde. The retina contains a very high concentration of alcohol dehydrogenase, which intervenes in the retinol/retinal interconversion critical in the process of vision; this enzyme acts on ethanol and methanol in addition to retinol, and can yield a large amount of the aldehydes in a small and highly active (and sensitive) nervous tissue. The consequence of methanol poisoning is thus too often irreversible damage to the retina, including blindness.
"Evidently, the small amounts of methanol that can be released from aspartame can hardly be compared with drinking methanol-laced alcoholic beverages, but people with altered hepatic function should limit even this possibility of poisoning. However, the methanol released from aspartame is not only produced in the intestine (this question has not been investigated, but "assumed"). Experimental data using labeled aspartame showed that a high proportion of the compound is absorbed intact (as do a number of small peptides, which are normally broken up within the intestinal cells themselves and not in the lumen) and can even be excreted intact in the urine (again, not investigated). Nevertheless there is sufficient and unassailable information showing a distribution of methanol moiety-related label in most of the experimental animals body organs, including the liver, brain, retina etc.
"This means that at least a sizeable part of aspartame is broken up not in the gut but within tissue cells, probably by the effect of a number of esterases of the cell membrane and lysosomes. Thus, the methanol is not released in the gut, carried to the bloodstream and thus highly diluted, but is produced in tiny amounts directly in the cells (no dilution-related protection here!) where it is readily oxidized to formaldehyde... and this 1C highly-reactive aldehyde binds proteins and nucleic acids generating adducts. If a protein is affected its function is compromised and is eventually eliminated (probably through ubiquitinization and proteosome processing) but if DNA is altered, then its function may be affected in a way similar to a mutation.
"DNA damage may end the viability of the cell, which dies, or produce an altered cell function and signalling, or --worse-- may deregulate this cell inducing severe alterations or cancer.
"The problem with aspartame is that what we know about pure methanol poisoning could not be directly applied here because its release and processing do not follow the robust intestinal-portal-hepatic system of detoxification, but stealthy goes to cells and induces potential damage to cells and systems where there is abundance of alcohol dehydrogenase or an active blood flow and metabolism.
"If the methanol released into the cells somehow would end as formiate (i.e. no losses of formaldehyde in the production of adducts) then its only ways out would be its complete oxidation to CO2 or its partial integration into the 1C pool metabolism. A few reviews (not studies) assumed that the conspicuous presence of methanol label from aspartame in tissue components was the consequence of incorporation of 1C fragments to amino acids and nucleotide bases. However, elementary Biochemistry texts already show that this incorporation could only be significant in the methyl group of methionine or in the skeleton of pyrimidines. Chromatographic analysis of cell components in rats treated with labelled aspartame showed unequivocally that neither methionine nor pyrimidines showed the presence of the label, which was distributed into "unknown" compounds (adducts), in line with what is known of formaldehyde chemistry.
"With respect to the problem of ascertaining how much methanol is in a given amount of aspartame, it is easy, one mol of aspartame yields one mol of methanol and, potentially, one mol of formaldehyde. The expression of methanol content in aspartame as a percentage of its weight is not applicable, since methanol is not a component of aspartame: you need to add a molecule of water to release it. Complete hydrolysis of aspartame's two ester bonds needs 2 moles of water per mol of aspartame, and the weight of the resulting products is higher (by the incorporation of water) than that of the original product."
Dr. Maria Alemany
Departament de Nutrici Bromatologia
Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona
Av. Diagonal, 645
08028 Barcelona. Espanya / Espa Spain
tel. 34 93 403 4606; fax 34 93 403 7064
E-mail: mailto:malemany@ub.edu
Dr. Alemany also said: "The mechanisms of methanol release are different and this is the main question that my earlier paper showed, and hence this is why it is so damaging and reconciles the effects observed on people with the logical conclusion that a few milligrams of methanol should show a scaled-down (but otherwise identical) effect comparable to that of ingesting a bottle of wood-spirits. "
Here is the Trocho Study:
http://www.mpwhi.com/formaldehyde_from_aspartame.pdf
What he is speaking about is what was also addressed by Dr. James Bowen, that in fruit and vegetables there is also ethanol, the classic antidote to methanol poisoning, and furthermore, methanol in fruits and vegetables is bound to pectin.
The true facts are well known in medical science, so any physician or researcher who says otherwise should never have made it out of chemistry class or medical school. Therefore when aspartame manufacturers write all the propaganda they do, here in the US they are in violation of Title 18, Section 1001 of the criminal code, stumbling the public with full knowledge and fraud. This was the very law the FDA used to try and indict the manufacturer in the first place.
Here is that information:
January 10, 1977: In a 33 page letter, FDA Chief Counsel Richard Merrill recommends to U.S. Attorney Sam Skinner that a grand jury investigate Searle for "apparent violations of the Federal Food, Drugs and Cosmetic Act, 21 U.S.C. 331 (e), and the Falser Reports to the Government Act, 18 U.S.C. 1001, for "their willful and knowing failure to make reports to the Food and Drug Administration required by the Act, 21 U.S.C. 355 (i) and for concealing material facts and making false statements in reports of animal studies conducted to establish the safety of (aspartame)."
The aspartame industry has given their propaganda to governments around the world and influenced them. What has bothered me about Food Standards is I've made the factual information available and FS continues to use the propaganda.
Here is their propaganda answered with medical references: http://www.dorway.com/offasprt.html I have sent this to Food Standards before and it remains as if facts make no different.
-------------------------
Dr. Woodrow Monte
"There is something very wrong going on, something that is killing good people and causing untold suffering to families and communities around the world. Never have such a high percentage of us been afflicted with so many tragic wasting diseases. In the past 30 years a group of diseases including multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, breast cancer, lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, melanoma and a once rare birth defect, autism have reached epidemic proportion in the United States and many other countries of the world. These changes have come on slowly enough where we seem to be accepting this as the way life works. You must believe me that the changes that we have seen over the last generation are unprecedented in the history of medical science. These are the worst of times--- and the truth is they are the result of a tragic decision made at the point of a gun by the Food and Drug Administration of the United States in 1981. The origin of the onset of this plague coincides perfectly with their approval of Aspartame, an artificial sweetener that contains methanol that converts into deadly formaldehyde within the brain and sinew of all who consume it."
September 16, 2009
Woodrow C. Monte PhD
Professor of Food Science
Arizona State University
Dr. Monte is the author of the peer reviewed journal article: Aspartame: Methanol and the Public Health: http://www.mpwhi.com/aspartame_methanol_and_public_health.pdf
This one was not considered in the original review of aspartame in Europe. Felicity Mawson,
Mission Possible UK and myself spoke with Miguel Angel Granero Rosell and Peter Wagstaffe in the EU in the 2002 review and I brought them other damning information such as Dr. Monte's paper and other scientific reports including how industry creates flawed studies. Only industry studies were used and the damning scientific information was eliminated. Here is the Independent Analysis of the "Opinion of the European Commission, Scientific Committee on Food Update on the Safety of Aspartame / E951" (SCF 2002) by Mark Gold: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/scf2002-response.htm
More of his reports:
http://www.thetruthaboutstuff.com/review1.shtml
http://www.thetruthaboutstuff.com/review2.shtml
http://www.thetruthaboutstuff.com/pdf/%282%29%20FASEB%20Meeting%201990%20Abstract%20and%20paper.pdf
If you are interested in how far the aspartame industry will go to stop hearings on aspartame from people who have the facts this is the story with Dr. Monte:He tried to get a hearing in Arizona because aspartame breaks down at 86 degrees and in hot Arizona where the temperature can be over 100 degrees many days you're talking about formaldehyde cocktails, especially when they sit out diet pop cans in front of convenience stores.
On Feb 17, l984, the FDA denied Dr. Woodrow Monte and James Turner the opportunity to hold a safety hearing on questions raised in their petition (Federal Register l984). G. D. Searle sent a number lobbyists to the State of Arizona including Andrew Herwitz, Arizona Governor Babbitt's former Chief of Staff, Charles Pine, a prominent Arizona lobbyist Roger Thies, a G.D. Searle lawyer and David West, a G.D. Searle official. (Gordon l987, page 507 of US Senate l987).
Dr. Woodrow Monte filed for reconsideration of his petition for a hearing in Arizona to have aspartame banned. He was granted a hearing scheduled for April l985. (Gordon l987, page 507 of US Senate l987). In April l985, in an unusual and secret maneuver, the Arizona legislature removed the text in a Toxic Waste Bill and used it to pass a bill which banned the regulation of FDA approved food additives (Gordon l987, page 508 of US Senate l987). This bill scuttled the hearing that Dr. Monte had been promised.
It should also be noted that aspartame is an adulterant and therefore in the US violates Interstate Commerce Laws. Here is the report by the National Soft Drink Assn, now American Beverage: http://www.mpwhi.com/open_letter_dick_adamson.htm
Note this paragraph:
NSDA said: "The present record does not contain data which demonstrate that the use of APM in soft drinks will not result in the adulteration of the beverages under section 402 (a)(3)of the FDC Act. 21 U.S.C. 342 (a) (3), which provides that a food is adulterated if it contains, in whole or in part, "...a decomposed substance or if it is otherwise unfit for food."
Because is breaks down and the FDA knows it and reported it couldn't be heated, the aspartame industry wrote a patent saying they fixed it, and the FDA allowed it for baking. The only problem is studies continue to show the breakdown, like Trocho. Even a 12 year old had Diet Coke in the "fridge" tested by Winston Food Lab which showed the aspartame had broken down to formaldehyde and DKP, the brain tumor agent.
UAREP:
I understand Food Standards relies on this report.
From the book Aspartame (NutraSweet) Is It Safe? By H. J. Roberts, M.D Writing about shortcoming in aspartame approval Dr. Roberts says:
"The failure to challenge the manufacturer's contract with Universities Associated for Research and Education in Pathology (UAREP). This private group was engaged to determine the factual accuracy of prior aspartame studies - but with the stipulation that UAREP "shall not express an opinion" regarding either the design or safety significance of these studies, nor make recommendations about the safety of aspartame for human use! Dr. M. Adrian Gross (FDA toxicologist and scientist) also challenged the credentials of UAREP relative to its ability to assess prior aspartame studies."
Dr. Roberts told me this is the most outrageous thing they did. They swore UAREP to silence. How much did they get for being silenced? A half a million dollars!
Here is a comment this week about UAREP from Attorney James Turner who with Dr. John Olney tried to prevent approval of aspartame. He was there from the beginning, before it was approved
"I have been told that Food Standards relies on the UAREP study. This did not address any of the questions about poor study design, manipulated data and the key studies and the scientific credibility raised by the commissioner's task force. It is a complete whitewash that was unscientific and poorly conducted and the pathologists should be ashamed of themselves. Anybody in industry who wants a sound pathology report should avoid any of the pathologists in that study of UAREP" You must remember who paid for this study - Searle themselves, $500,000.
From the records:
On August 4, 1976, G.D. Searle representatives met with the FDA and convinced them to allow G.D. Searle to hire a private agency, University Associated for Education in Pathology (UAREP), and pay them $500,000 to "validate" the other 12 studies (Gordon 1987 page 498 of US Senate 1987)
According the FDA Commissioner during the early 1980s,Arthur Hull Hayes, the UAREP investigation was to "make sure that the studies were actually conducted."
As described by Florence Graves (1984, page S5500 of Congressional Record 1985a):
"The pathologists were specifically told that they were not to make a judgment about aspartame's safety or to look at the designs of the tests. Why did the FDA choose to have pathologists conduct an investigation when even some FDA officials acknowledged at the time that UAREP had a limited task which would only partially shed light on the validity of Searle's testing? The answer is not clear.
"Dr. Kenneth Endicott, Director of UAREP, said in an interview that the FDA had 'reasons to suspect' that Searle's tests 'were not entirely honest.' Because the FDA 'had doubts about [Searle's] veracity,' Edicott said, officials wanted UAREP 'to determine whether the reports were accurate.'
"FDA scientist Dr. Adrian Gross, in a letter to an FDA official, said, 'speaking as a pathologist, it seemed questionable that the group could do the kind of comprehensive investigation that was required. He pointed in particular to a variety of issues that needed to be investigated. He said some of these would involved closely questioning administrators and lab technicians about their practices. Since many important issues that should be investigated 'have nothing to do with pathology,' he said, only trained FDA investigators were qualified to do a comprehensive evaluation of the testing. . . .,p> "Meanwhile, an interview with Endicott indicates that Adrian Gross was right: the pathologists couldn't--and didn't--carry out a comprehensive review. . . . As former FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt put it in a recent interview, UAREP looked at the slides to determine whether they had been misrepresented, but didn't look at the conduct of the experiments in depth. The 1975 [FDA] task force investigation looked at the conduct of the experiments in depth, but did not look at the slides. . . . Endicott agreed . . . 'We could only look at what was there--the tissues.'
The findings of this investigation were released in the Bressler Report in August 1977
On December 13, 1978, UAREP submitted its results of their analysis of 12 of G.D. Searle's aspartame studies. UAREP stated in their report that "no discrepancies in any of the sponsor's reports that were of sufficient magnitude or nature that would compromise that data originally submitted." (Farber 1989, page 33) Remember, the Director of UAREP said in an interview that their pathologists did not conduct a comprehensive review of the studies, they only looked at the animal tissues (Graves 1984, page S5500 of Congressional Record 1985a).
UAREP pathologists who examined the test results were discovered to have missed and withheld negative findings from the FDA (Gross 1987b, page 2-5). In some cases, they completely missed cancerous brain tumors when analyzing the slides. In addition, some of the slides that were to be examined by UAREP pathologists were missing even though they where supposed to have been kept under "FDA seal." (Olney 1987, page 6-7)
FDA Toxicologist Adrian Gross stated that the UAREP review "may well be interpreted as nothing short of a whitewash." (Farber 1989, page 114).Given that the UAREP review results was so biased in favor of G.D. Searle, one wonders why the FDA would allow a company being investigated for fraud to pay $500,000 and hire an outside entity to "validate" their studies.
Even though the UAREP report was biased, there were numerous instances in that report which demonstrated that G.D. Searle had not submitted even marginally accurate findings to the FDA of their pre-approval aspartame tests. For example, in one study, twelve animals actually had cancerous brain tumors, yet UAREP reported to the FDA that only three animals had such tumors (Gross 1987b, page 3-4).
The ADI Issue:
Attorney James Turner made this comment:
"It also should be noted that the public basically does not know there is an ADI on aspartame, let alone what it is. Before they got to 5000 products, a huge number of children were over the ADI. The FDA stated very early on when they had a small group of products, there were large numbers of children consuming NutraSweet beyond the ADI. Secondly, a six pack of orange soda in 1984 exceeded the ADI for a 10 year old boy, so probably all children using NutraSweet are exceeding the ADI, and we know from the many studies people used NutraSweet gained weight. Now we have an obesity epidemic as expected."
Ralph Walton, M.D., did research for 60 Minutes on scientific peer reviewed studies and funding
(http://www.dorway.com/peerrev.html) and also did his own study. Here are his remarks about the ADI:
"With regard to the issue of the ADI, in our 1993 double blind study on adverse reactions to aspartame subjects received a daily aspartame dose of 30mg/kg - well below the upper limit of 50mg/kg/day which the FDA considered "safe." The adverse reactions were so severe that our Institutional Review Board halted the study prior to its completion. It is my personal opinion that the only truly safe daily intake of aspartame is zero, but the study clearly demonstrated that an intake of 30mg/kg is extremely hazardous".
Dr. Adrian Gross in a letter to Senator Howard Metzenbaum in Oct 1987 made this comment about the ADI:
"This concludes my remarks on the quality or reliability of the experimental studies with aspartame carried out by the GD Searle & Co. or by the contractors working under the direction of that firm. Since Mr. Wagoner of your Office has requested my comments in a very short period of time, I am expediting this letter to you now; however, I plan to send you in the very near future an additional communications where two other issues are discussed in some detail:- the problem with the brain tumors induced by aspartame and that the FDA's having set a very high (and, to my view, clearly dangerous) level of Acceptable Daily Intake, or ADI, for this particular food additive in the diet of humans."
It was Dr. Adrian Gross who told Congress in 1985 that since aspartame causes cancer they should not be able to set an ADI for aspartame at all.
On August 1, l985 the FDA's own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, told Congress 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, "Given the cancer causing potential of aspartame how would the FDA justify its position that it views a certain amount of aspartame as constituting an allowable daily intake or 'safe' level of it? Is that position in effect not equivalent to setting a 'tolerance' for this food additive and thus a violation of that law? And if the FDA itself elects to violate the law, who is left to protect the health of the public?" Congressional Record SID83 5:131 (August 1, l985)
In 1983, aspartame was approved for use in soft drinks and the FDA doubled the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) of aspartame from 20 mg/kg to 50 mg/kg. Aspartame. Does that date tell you anything? There is no acceptable ADI for a poison. However, when aspartame was approved in carbonated soft drinks it was well known that immediately the ADI they already had would be abused, so it was raised and, of course, that can be abused as well. Aspartame is very addictive. The free methyl alcohol is classified as a narcotic. (Louis, R. J. Sax's Dangerous Properties of Industrial Materials, Eighth Edition, New York: Van Nostrand Reingold (1992) pp. 2251-2252. It causes chronic methanol poisoning which affects the dopamine system of the brain and causes the addiction.
Food Standards Study:
Consider what Mark Gold of the Aspartame Toxicity Center wrote about a small amount of aspartame for a study:
"NutraSweet researchers have made a significant effort to convince other researchers and the general population that it is okay to test using small doses of aspartame. Much of their argument is based on average intake values presented in their ridiculous intake surveys. The fact is that hundreds of thousands of people are consuming amounts of aspartame approaching the FDA's Acceptable Daily Intake level. If the NutraSweet Company actually believes that the FDA's ADI is a safe amount of aspartame, then that is the minimum that should be tested. Either "put up, or shut up" so to speak. In order to have a safety margin, it is preferable to test at least double the ADI using read-world aspartame-containing products in long-term experiments.
"If they do not want to test at levels at or above the FDA's ADI (using real-world aspartame of course), then we should 1) lower the ADI back to 20 mg/kg/day, 2) label the amount of aspartame on each "food" product that it is in, 3) put a warning on the label stating that no more than 20 mg/kg/day (9 mg/lbs./day) should be consumed, and 4) start proper safety testing in humans at 20 mg/kg/day (or more) using real-world aspartame-containing products."
Also, I might mention that today in 2009 most independent aspartame experts, are of the opinion
that human studies should no longer be done because after more than 3 decades and continual independent research it has been established beyond any doubt that aspartame is a chemical poison and harm is done to the participants. In fact, in Dr. Walton's study the administrator of
the facility took part in his study and sustained a retinal detachment and lost the vision in one eye, and this was under the ADI for aspartame. Food Standards may call this anecdotal but I'm sure the administrator calls it blindness in one eye from aspartame.
When Food Standards considers aspartame reactors it needs to understand the nature of this poison. It triggers chemical hypersensitization. Therefore, if someone gets off aspartame and accidentally ingests some they can react seriously, even go into anaphylactic shock. Cases have been reported. In the movie, Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, Cheryl Kemptner was interviewed. With full knowledge aspartame triggers polychemical sensitivity syndrome, and knowing if she accidentally got some she could react, she notified the hospital on entrance that she could not be given aspartame. Unfortunately she was given a glass of Crystal Lite with aspartame, became a Code Blue and was resuscitated. I've tried to explain this to you.
Consider the reactions with this ADI. Dr. H. J. Roberts reported in the medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic:
"A severe metabolic acidosis might be induced clinically after the ingestion of a large amount of aspartame, especially by children. A London physician wrote about his nine year old daughter who had been given an aspartame cola.
"In all, she probably drank about 1.5 litres over a 24 hour period together with eating a few slices of toast in the same 24 hours. The following morning she was found semi-conscious and confused. She had a metabolic ketoacidosis, but a normal blood sugar on admission to the hospital. Tests for metabolic poisons such as aspirin were negative. Fortunately, rehydration restored her to normal biochemically within 4 - 5 hours together with restoration to normal levels of consciousness. I thought at the time that the diet cola could be responsible, but could not find any evidence to support this. The company in the UK was very defensive about the effects of aspartame, and denied any knowledge of the adverse effects of aspartame."
Further Dr. H. J. Roberts discusses the ADI:
"Dr. Frank E. Young, former FDA Commissioner, defined the ADI during the November 3, 1987 Senate hearing on aspartame as "an estimate of the amount of the food additive expressed on a body weight basis in animal studies, that can be ingested daily over a "lifetime" without appreciable health risk. It focuses on continued exposure over a lifetime, and not on the exposure that could occur on any given day".
Dr. Roberts quotes Dr. Adrian Gross on the ADI in a Congressional statement: "It is clear that
risks of this magnitude for what the FDA regards as a 'safe' level of exposure to aspartame
represent an outright calamity or disaster." ...Senator Howard Metzenbaum took the FDA to task for increasing the acceptable daily maximum intake of aspartame from 20 mg/kg body weight to 50 mg/kg. He noted that this action represented an exception to the usual 100-food safety factor used for regulated food additives.
Dr. Roberts discusses the adverse effects of small doses:
"Severe reactions to small amounts of aspartame, as from chewing a stick of gum, were described in Chapter II-E. It is obvious that such intake does not begin to approach the ADI. Two possible mechanisms for the rapid entry of aspartame are absorption from the mouth into the blood stream (akin to the placement of nitroglycerine under the tongue in treating angina pectoris) and direct entry from the oropharynx into the brain."
"Pardridge (1987, p. 206) asserted that the 10 mg/kg aspartame intake regarded by Levy and Waisbren (1987) as "large amounts" could be consumed by a 50 pound child drinking a single can (12 ounces) of a carbonated aspartame beverage. "
"Children weighing 45 pounds who drink a two liter bottle of an aspartame cola beverage (containing over 1,100 mg aspartame and 110 mg. Methyl alcohol) already have exceeded the daily limit. Furthermore, they could have easily consumed 30 mg/kg aspartame before dinner in the form of cereals, chocolate milk, milk shakes, chocolate pudding, gelatins, cereals, orange drinks, chewing or bubble gum, and numerous other products so sweetened."
How is Aspartame Made:
Dr. Deagle explains how aspartame is genetically engineered:
"Most people when asked how Aspartame is made do not have the first step of understanding. While an E.R. doctor and primary care physician in Augusta, GA in 1987 and 1988, I was told a number of interesting facts about the adjacent Aspartame factory. Bacteria with genes inserted generate a sludge which is centrifuged to remove the aspartame and many hundreds of contaminant organic and amino acids are present. We were told not to report illness or worker's compensation issues for fear of being fired by the hospital, now the Augusta Regional Medical Center. Many of their employees presented with psychiatric, neuropathy conditions, chronic fatigue and organic cases of loss of cognitive function. This powder from the dried sludge was then transported for packaging in factories elsewhere in the US, before sale as Equal and now the myriad of names of this neurotoxin." Bill Deagle, M.D.
Dr. Deagle told me he considers aspartame more dangerous than depleted uranium because of its ubiquitous presence in food.
Dr. Richard Caldecott of the Atomic Energy Commission said in 1961:
"By far the most mutagenic agents known to man are chemicals, not radiation. And in this regard, food additive rather than fallout at present levels may present a greater danger."
Discussion:
Today aspartame is in over 100 countries of the world. This is how it got approved in England: http://www.mpwhi.com/how_aspartame_got_approved_in_england.htm
G.D. Searle executives admitted to "payments to employees of certain foreign governments to obtain sales of their products." (Searle 1975)
When I was in New Zealand interviewing Food Standards I was told they did no studies on aspartame but accepted the FDA approvals. They were rubberstamped around the world.
In a follow up letter to Senator Howard Metzenbaum, November 3, 1987 Dr. Gross states: "It is impossible for anyone to appreciate just how a determination by the FDA that the G.D. Searle & Co. experimental studies with aspartame were of an unacceptable quality in 1976 can be metamorphosed several years later into a view by that same Agency that essentially the same studies were sufficiently reliable for anyone to assess that this food additive is "reasonably certain" to be safe for consumption by humans.
"Even if, contrary to the FDA's view in 1976, the quality of the conduct of those studies could be relied upon by the same agency to even begin making such a determination, at least one of those studies had reveled a highly significant dose-related increase in the incidence of brain tumors as a result of exposure to aspartame. The full incidence of those brain tumors was not disclosed by G.D. Searle & Co. to the FDA prior to the initial approval for the marketing of aspartame in 1974; moreover, the review of that study in the FDA was so flawed that the Agency apparently did not even realize that at the time, only a portion of the observations on brain tumors had in fact been submitted by G.D. Searle & Co. in their petition for that approval."
Aspartame couldn't be proven safe in 1976 and in 1977 the FDA asked for Searle's indictment for fraud. Dr. Jacqueline Verrett, FDA toxicologist, testified to Congress in 1987 and told them aspartame still hadn't been proven safe: http://www.mpwhi.com/j_verrett_testimony.pdf
The Trocho 1998 Study showed not only was aspartame not safe but embalms living tissue and
damages DNA. When you damage DNA you can destroy humanity. In 2005 and 2007 the Ramazzini Studies showed aspartame to be a multipotential carcinogen confirming FDA's own
records. Aspartame triggers many types of tumors in original studies and neoplasms were filtered out by Searle as the Bressler Report admitted. EFSA tried to rebut these prestigious studies peer reviewed by 7 world experts with absurdity. However, Dr. Herman Koeter of EFSA, before he left reported they were pressured by industry to hijack science.
The controversy on aspartame continues to rage, the reason for the review by EFSA, but no "real" independent researchers and experts" like those mentioned in this report have been invited to the meeting in November. They have people on their committee with ties to industry who influence any outcome.
So aspartame has never been proved safe and cannot be. Industry finances quack studies from rubber duck labs.
Food Standards has been asked to remove industry flacks' rebuttals from prestigious independent studies like the Trocho Study. Tephly was used in this case who finally confessed he used the wrong type of tests. Who is he?
A series of poorly conceived, flawed studies funded by G.D. Searle were published in Volume 2 (1976) of the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. An Associate Editor of this scientific journal was Robert G. McConnell, the Director of G.D. Searle's Department of Pathology and Toxicology (the department responsible for monitoring the quality of G.D. Searle's pre approval tests investigated by the 1975 FDA Task Force). Another G.D. Searle employee, Carl R.Mackerer was an editor of the journal. Another editor of the journal was Thomas R. Tephly, the person responsible for conducting a series of badly flawed blood methanol and formate measurements in NutraSweet-funded studies over the last 20 years.
Yet, Food Standards allows Tephly to rebut the Trocho Study. This is shameful.
Here is what Dr. Adrian Gross said about Searle in the Task Force report:
"They [G.D. Searle] lied and they didn't submit the real nature of their observations because had they done that it is more than likely that a great number of these studies would have been rejected simply for adequacy. What Searle did, they took great pains to camouflage these shortcomings of the study. As I say filter and just present to the FDA what they wished the FDA to know and they did other terrible things for instance animals would develop tumors while they were under study. Well they would remove these tumors from the animals."
No wonder Searle sued to remove the Task Force Findings on aspartame.
On March 24, 1976 The FDA's task force reported: "At the heart of the FDA's regulatory process is its ability to rely upon the integrity of the basic safety data submitted by sponsors of regulated products. Our investigation clearly demonstrates that, in the G. D. Searle Company, we have no basis for such reliance now." The task force further said, "Some of our findings suggest an attitude of disregard for FDA's mission of protection of the public health by selectively reporting the results of studies in a manner which allays the concerns of questions of an FDA reviewer."
Food Standards was set up to distance itself from industry, but pushes aspartame propaganda. If aspartame is safe it means all FDA's records up until Don Rumsfeld got it on the market, the testimonies of "independent" prominent researchers and physicians to Congress, FDA's report of 92 documented symptoms on aspartame, all independent studies, medical texts on the dangers and multitudes of articles exposing its toxicity as well as case histories around the world are lies. Read the testimony of Dr. Paula Rhodes who had an Aspartame Toxicity Clinic in Atlanta. She was on Channel 4, Jacksonville, Florida: http://www.news4jax.com/news/445258/detail.html
Consider the words of Barbara Mullarkey quoted in one of Dr. H. J. Roberts books: Sweet'ner
Dearest: Bittersweet Vignettes About Aspartame (NutraSweet). She was restating Dr. Robert
Moser's words from The Pharos (Summer 1991) journal of Alpha Omega Alpha (an honor medical society based on his talk to Yale Medical Students. Dr. Moser works as a consultant for NutraSweet and defends aspartame.
"If you hate people, you can spend your life plugged into a mountain of shining diagnostic equipment or perched beside an electron microscope. Or you can become a cruise-ship doctor and play patty-cake with rich, blue-haired widows, or you can become a department chairman at Yale, or you can work for The NutraSweet Company."
All I'm asking is that Food Standards speak the truth. Setting the facts straight can save millions of lives and Europe can become a hero to the world in banning it. You can't leave out these facts because it becomes deception by omission. The aspartame industry are scholars at this, and even if damning studies by independents get to the public they get a flack to rebut it. Anyone consuming aspartame can react to drugs to treat the problems this poison triggers and many of these drugs actually contain aspartame.
This report has only addressed a couple of issues dealing with the ADI, methanol and testing. For instance, when the Bressler Report (FDA audit) was completed, the FDA retyped it leaving out the worst 20%, investigation of two mouse studies, comments by a top FDA scientist, Dr. Xavier Collins. As Jerome Bressler said to Lane Shore and myself: "Without his name and the two missing mouse studies this report is incomplete." They have been under FDA seal for 3 decades. FDA didn't want the public to learn how bad Searle studies were. Mission Possible has now obtained these documents and is ready for the world to read them.
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.wnho.net
http://www.dorway.com
Aspartame Toxicity Center: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame
Clip from Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World by DC Attorney James Turner on how aspartame was approved: http://www.soundandfury.tv/pages/rumsfeld.html
History of Aspartame by former FDA Investigator, Arthur Evangelista: http://www.wnho.net/history_of_aspartame.htm
Ecologist: Shocking Story of the World's Best Selling Sweetener: http://www.mpwhi.com/ecologist_september_2005.pdf
Proposition 65, California: If any product has anything on the "nasty" list they require a cancer warning to come into California. Aspartame has two of them - methanol and formaldehyde. http://www.mpwhi.com/letter_to_cynthia_oshita.htm