I can recall having spent long hours in emails with the anti-aspartame activist Betty Martini, whose website is here: http://www.mpwhi.com/main.htm, to overcome the view that aspartame is anything other than toxic. It would be an arduous task to regurgitate that information, so instead I have provided documents to entice the interest of the reaser towards further research. He can then pursue the following: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/abuse/ Some information I recieved from Betty Martini follows: Aspartame was not approved by science but thru the political chicanery of Don Rumsfeld. D.C. Attorney James Turner, explains how Rumsfeld did it in the documentary Sweet Misery, a Poisoned World. Here’s a clip from the movie so you can hear what he said: http://www.soundandfury.tv/pages/rumsfeld2.html Searle’s problem was they couldn’t get studies to show safety. For example, in the Bressler Report, attached, you read where they would excise brain tumors from the rats, put them back in the study and after they died resurrected them back on paper. They even filtered out neoplasms to hide them from the FDA. Repeatedly Searle was caught in this criminal activity. On January 10, 1977 in a 33 page letter, FDA Chief Counsel Richard Merrill recommended to the Justice Department Attorney Sam Skinner that a grand jury investigate Searle for "apparent violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 21 USC 331 (e), and the False 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 making false statements in reports of animal studies conducted to establish the safety of aspartame." The FDA called special attention to studies investigating the effect of NutraSweet on monkeys and hamsters. Searle was caught dead to rights, so they hired Skinner, made him a deal he couldn’t refuse. So the former Justice Department prosecutor became a defender. Next at bat - U. S. Prosecutor William Conlon, promptly switched sides too. By then the statute of limitations had expired. Searle knew they couldn't win the case so they simply hired the prosecutors. Nevertheless the FDA had no intention of approving aspartame. The fraud was so great that Dr. John Olney (who with James Turner fought against approval of aspartame) told Searle to do studies in his lab so he could see that they were done honestly, with supervision. Dr. Olney believed the FDA wouldn’t approve aspartame because the studies showed it produced brain damaged. What he didn’t anticipate is that Searle didn’t submit these findings to the FDA. January 30, 1980 the Public Board of Inquiry revoked Searle’s petition for approval declaring that they had "not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive." Searle had spent $17 million on an aspartame factory and had no intention of giving up, poison or no. At this point they hired Donald Rumsfeld who said he would call in his markers and get it approved anyway. What were those markers? President Reagan had told Rumsfeld he would be nominated for vice president, but instead selected Bush number 1. The day after Reagan took office he appointed Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes as the new FDA Commissioner, to over-rule the Board of Inquiry. Reagan knew it would take 30 days to get Hayes to the FDA, so he wrote an Executive Order making the FDA powerless to do anything about aspartame. At 3 AM that night a member of Reagan’s staff called the FDA Commissioner Jere Goyan and fired him. Here is a letter from his wife who was there when the terminating call came in: http://www.mpwhi.com/letter_about_jere_goyan.pdf Once aspartame was on the market there was outrage as consumers were diagnosed with seizures, multiple sclerosis and blindness from the free methyl alcohol releases. Senator Orrin Hatch, on Monsanto’s payroll, obstructed hearings on aspartame for years, but there were 3 Congressional hearings from 1985 to l987. Hatch was on Monsanto’s payroll, and kept the bill in committee that would put a moratorium on aspartame until NIH completed independent studies on the flood of aspartame problems they were seeing: seizures, blindness, headaches, sexual dysfunction, behavioral problems, especially in children, drug interactions and birth defects. About that time Dr. James Bowen wrote FDA that “aspartame is mass poisoning of the American public and 70 countries” - today over 100. http://www.dorway.com/drbowen.txt He wrote: "For this reason, I am opposed to labeling aspartame content of food and drinks. To do so would imply that the government is taking some sort of responsible action....when the only responsible action would be to immediately take aspartame off the market, fully disclose its toxicities, offer full compensation to the injured, public and criminally prosecute anyone who participated in the fraudulent placement of aspartame on the marketplace." In the UPI Investigation a Dr. Wurtman was threatened if he did studies on aspartame and seizures he would lose his funding. He capitulated. Of relevance is " Quick Review of Monsanto/NutraSweet's PR Statments Regarding the Aspartame / Brain Cancer Research Published by Dr. John W. Olney, et al. in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology (Nov. 1996)": http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/brain.txt According to the Ecologist, aspartame was listed with the pentagon in an inventory of prospective biochemical warfare weapons submitted to Congress. http://www.mpwhi.com/ecologist_september_2005.pdf The contents of the CDC report go against their stated recommendations, and the summary on their website: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00000426.htm A plethora of negative symptoms are described in the investigation, and do not fit in with the "mild nature" described in the CDC summary. See paragraph 2 p. 127 of the following: http://ia801602.us.archive.org/28/items/OnAspartameMsg/1994_cdc_report_on_aspartame.pdf The Trocho Study shows the formaldehyde converted from the free methyl alcohol actually embalms tissue and damages DNA. www.mpwhi.com/formaldehyde_from_aspartame.pdf Regarding an attack on this by a propagandist, "Dr. Maria Alemany, Departament du Nutricio I Bromatologia, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, who was the researcher for the damning Trocho Study wrote that he was deeply insulted by Garsts propaganda. Remember that Dr. Alemanys study proved the formaldehyde converted from the free methyl alcohol embalms living tissue and damages DNA. As we know when you damage DNA you can destroy humanity. So concerned for the public was Dr. Alemany that after his study he reported it to the authorities. He told me personally that he was concerned aspartame could kill millions and I said has killed millions. After all aspartame can trigger all sorts of neurodegenerative diseases and tumors and can precipitate diabetes. Even the FDA found many types of tumors and brain cancer on original studies and the Ramazzini Study in 2005 confirmed FDA findings reporting the study showed aspartame to be a multipotential carcinogen. Dr. Alemany is a hero to the world and proved beyond a shadow of doubt what aspartame experts believed for years.Dr. Alemany said: First, Garst suggests that perhaps aspartame just affects people with a metabolic deficit. If that were the case (I doubt it, deficits may just enhance the effect of aspartame), why then has it not been studied? In the case of cyclamate, the ban on its use is based on the deleterious effects on only a fraction of the population. Second. Dr. Garst accepts that aspartame yields formaldehyde... then, why not give formaldehyde to the people to help them synthesize methyl groups? Did I understood well (after speaking of the double helix which has very little to do here unless for the binding of formaldehyde to its strands to induce mutation) that Dr. Garst suggests that aspartame may be beneficial because its derived formaldehyde may supply one-carbon units for methylations through the folate pathway? If that were the case, why not get the FDA approval for aspartame as a drug/vitamin substitute? This is an outright fallacy (or better said bull-manure). Third. Please, not again the tale of the methyl-esters of pectins! It has been proved to nausea that most of the methyl-alcohol esters of uronic acids remain esterified through intestinal passage, and that freed in the large intestine by the action of the flora is majoritarily and keenly used by these microbes for their profit. The remaining methyl alcohol leaving the intestine is largely detoxified by the liver (this is a physiological mechanism well known and proved effective for millennia). Aspartame, however, is not fully hydrolyzed in the intestine, being absorbed in part intact. After the intestine-portal vein-liver trap is surpassed, the body protection against methanol wanes, and the tiny liberation of methanol in tissues yields little amounts of formaldehyde that cause serious damage, precisely because it behaves very differently from the natural products methanol. Even in cases of wood-alcohol (methanol) intoxication, the liver helps to stem the overflow of toxic. Methanol inhalation or injection is much more dangerous, because it goes directly into the bloodstream and tissues jumping the liver barrier. This is explained in elementary physiology and biochemistry courses, it is unbelievable that this is maintained as a "serious" scientific position by somebody that got a PhD, unless this is not a discourse of science but of economy.": http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_flack_tries_to_mislead_nm_legislature.htm Propagandists argue that there is just a small amount of methanol in aspartame, and there is more in oranges. What they don't say is that in oranges that it is accompanied by ethanol, which is the classic antidote for methanol toxicity and takes it out of your body safely. Here is a peer reviewed journal article about it. http://www.mpwhi.com/aspartame_methanol_and_public_health.pdf Methanol also binds to pectin. In aspartame there is no ethanol. Here is their basic propaganda answered with references: http://dorway.com/dorwblog/?page_id=606 Regarding the arguments by propagandists,from the aforementioned article regarding Alemany: "H. J. Roberts, M.D., FACP a diabetic specialist has produced 20 books and his first text on medical diagnosis was used by 60,000 doctors to prepare for their Board examinations. In his response to Garst's allegation that aspartame sensitivity reflects folate deficiency, he wrote to the members of the New Mexico Legislature: You have received correspondence concerning folate deficiency as the purported cause of aspartame disease. While folate plays a role in the metabolism of methanol (methyl alcohol), the severity and widespread nature of reactions to aspartame products suggest that this assertion must be tempered by the following: The methyl alcohol in aspartame is FREE (rarely found as such in nature.) The assertion that methanol concentrations never are very high after aspartame ingestion is erroneous. I devoted an entire chapter to methanol toxicity in my text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic (pp 668-685), and show in Figure XXI-1 the dose-related blood levels of methanol lasting 8 or more hours. The assertion that many New Mexicans suffer from a folate deficiency is challenged. While I discussed such a theoretical deficiency in my text, there is no evidence that folate deficiency is widespread among Americans. For example, a Mayo Clinic study involving thousands of blood assays concluded that it was rare. Garst ignores the major roles of phenylalanine and aspartic acid in aspartame disease. Enormous effort has gone into this constructive attempt to ban aspartame products. I believe that it constitutes an imminent health hazard for New Mexicans. You are to be congratulated for coming this far in the face of severe corporate resistance. H. J. Roberts, M.D., FACP, FCCP" Of further interest are Dr. Woodrow C. Monte's comments on methanol: http://www.mpwhi.com/aspartame_methanol_and_public_health.pdf Of relevance are the comments from FDA toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, to Congress on 8/1/85: Dr. Gross testified 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?" Here is the letter from Dr. Harris on FDA stationery regarding the pivotal studies that approved aspartame: https://ia801602.us.archive.org/28/items/OnAspartameMsg/MullarkeyFda.pdf Note they actually used a 52 week oral toxicity study that showed 5 monkeys had grand mal seizures and another one died. Here is the actual study: https://ia801602.us.archive.org/28/items/OnAspartameMsg/monkey_study.pdf The inquirer to the FDA wrote the following article, "Sweet Delusion", concerning aspartame: https://ia801602.us.archive.org/28/items/OnAspartameMsg/SweetDelusion.pdf DR. MORANDO SOFFRITTI, lead researcher on two groundbreaking long-term aspartame studies. He was recently honored at New York’s Mt Sinai School of Medicine with the Irving J Selikoff Award For his outstanding contributions to the identification of environmental and industrial carcinogens and his promotion of independent scientific research. Reviewing his two impeccable aspartame studies. Dr. Soffritti explains: 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. When the first Ramazzini study was done showing aspartame to be a multipotential carcinogen, EFSA was quick to rebut. Finally, Dr Herman, deputy executive director of EFSA resigned and confessed: "EU's food agency battles attempts to hijack science." http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?n=70720-efsa-health-claims-antibiotics It says: "Science and politics make poor bedfellows. Just ask Herman Koeter, deputy executive director at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which has felt the push and pull of national politics ever since the agency began operating four years ago." Aspartame was mentioned when it said: "Hot decisions that had political repercussions included a review of a controversial aspartame study" . Dr. Morando Soffritti himself showed how absurd the EFSA rebuttal was and wrote: "First, the EFSA (2006) overlooked the fact that the study was conducted until the natural death of the rodents. IT IS WELL KNOWN THAT INFECTIOUS PATHOLOGIES ARE PART OF THE NATURAL DYING PROCESS IN BOTH RODENTS AND HUMANS. "Second, if the statistically significant increased incidence of lymphomas/leukemias observed were indeed caused by an infected colony, one would expect to observe an increased incidence of lymphomas/leukemias not only in females but also in males. The EFSA (2006) did not comment on this discrepancy in their logic. "Finally, in support of the hypothesis regarding the safety of aspartame, the EFSA (2006) cited the negative results of recent carcinogenicity studies carried out in transgenic mice by the NTP; the ESFA did not mention that, becauhttp:// rense.com/general70/coca.htmse the NTP studies on genetically altered mice were performed using a new experimental model, the NTP subcommittee unanimously agreed "there is uncertainty whether the study possessed sufficient sensitivity to detect a carcinogenic effect" (NTP 2005). "Interestingly, the same scrutiny applied to our study has not been applied to a recent abstract published by Lim et al. (2006) from the NCI diet questionnaire survey (NCI 2006) in which self-reported aspartame consumption showed no increases in either leukemia/lymphomas or in brain cancer. These results have been used by industry, the EFSA, and others to argue that aspartame is not a risk for humans, in spite of our animal study results. Without specific information on each individual's consumption rate and duration it is difficult to assess the power of the survey, in spite of the large number of participants. The second related issue is whether aspartame is an early- or late-stage carcinogen. If it is an early-stage initiator of cancer, then reporting the lack of effects in older individuals who have not consumed aspartame since early childhood would be expected to show little or no increased cancer (Hoel 1985). "The safety-in particular, the noncarcinogenicity-of today's most widely diffused artificial sweeteners and their blends is largely based on studies conducted decades ago. I second Karstadt's nomination of acesulfame K for further study; however, I add that it should be evaluated using a long-term mega-experiment." Here Martini argues that Dr. Soffritti, who established that aspartame is a carcinogen, rebutted EFSA dismissal and that their position was inspired by the manufacturer: http://rense.com/general73/openn.htm Here is what Dr. Blaylock wrote about the study: http://www.wnho.net/new_aspartame_studies.htm Contra the agencies, the following is relevant: http://rense.com/general95/aspartt.html