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Our Modern Diet - The Bad / Tales of the Nutrasweet (Aspartame) Scandal
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submitted by Dr. Gary Farr - Contact the author here.
Last Updated February, 12, 2002
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In May, 1992 an article in Flying Safety Magazine explained the dangers of this ubiquitous substance. Some people have triggered aspartame related disorders with doses as small as that carried in a single stick of chewing gum. This could mean a pilot who drinks diet sodas is more susceptible to flicker vertigo or to flicker-induced epileptic activity. It also means that all pilots are potential victims of sudden memory loss, dizziness during instrurnent flight and gradual loss of vision. Some pilots have experienced grand mal seizures in the cockpits of commercial airline flights and have lost medical certification to fly-and with it their careers.
The FDA has received more than 10,000 consumer complaints on Nutra-Sweet. That's 80% of all complaints about food additives, yet they have done nothing to alert the American consumer who assumes, since it's so highly advertised, that it must be safe as mother's milk. If you are using aspartame and have headaches, depression, slurred speech. loss of memory, fibromyalgia type symptoms, loss of sensation in lower legs or shooting pains, loss of equilibrium, vertigo, anxiety attacks, chronic fatigue, vision loss, floaters, retinal detachment, seizures, heart palpitations, etc., you have Aspartame Disease! Many physicians are diagnosing multiple sclerosis when in reality it is methanol toxicity which mimics MS. Get off this dangerous drug right away. MS is not a death sentence, but methanol toxicity can be!
Fifty-one percent of FDA approved drugs have serious risks and could cause adverse reactions that lead to severe or permanent disability or death. The Center for Disease Control, Johns Hopkins University and the New Jersey School of Medicine estimate that 80,000-120,000 Americans are killed by prescription drugs every year. That this atrocious holocaust persists has everything to do with money and nothing to do with public health. Monsanto reaps $2 billion per year from the Aspartame toxic bonanza. This can buy a lot of bureaucrats! The FDA works for industry, not citizens. FDA head Arthur Hayes overruled his own board of inquiry to approve aspartame and then went to work for their public relations firm.
Federal attorney Sam Skinner was assigned to prosecute Searle for fraudulent tests in their application, but switched sides and went to work for Searle's lawyers and the case died when the statute of limitations ran out. Honest FDA toxicologist, the late Dr. Adrian Gross, wrote to Senator Howard Metzenbaum: "The views of the FDA's Center for Food Safety read like a script written for Abbott & Costello in the sense of their having perceptions inside-out and upside-down. ... FDA may have gone through the motions. ... such a 'process' or dance represents a farce and a mockery."
Aspartame is a molecule composed of three components: aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol. Methanol is wood alcohol that has killed or blinded thousands of skid row drunks. It converts into formaldehyde and formic acid (ant sting poison) in the gut. Formaldehyde, a deadly neurotoxin, is common embalming fluid, a Class A carcinogen. Phenylalanine is also neurotoxic when unaccompanied by the other amino acids in proteins. Aspartic acid causes brain lesions and neuroendocrine disorders in experimental animals. There are 92 documented symptoms including headaches, numbness, fatigue, blurred vision, heart palpitations, memory loss, dizziness, muscle spasms, weight gain, seizures, rashes, blindness, tachycardia, tinnitus, joint pain, nausea, depression, hearing loss, irritability, slurred speech, anxiety attacks, loss of taste, vertigo and insomnia.
Nutrasweet is in about 9,000 foods and on every restaurant table for the same reasons tobacco is everywhere: Greed, addiction and profit! The NutraSweet Company and sister Searle, whose chemists discovered aspartame while testing an ulcer drug, are owned by Monsanto. If you are taking other medicine, consider possible reactions you may have. In 1969, Searle approached Dr. Harry Waisman to study the effects of aspartame on primates. Seven infant monkeys were fed the chemical in milk. One died after 300 days; five others had grand mal seizures. Searle deleted these findings when they submitted this study to the FDA! The best way to understand NutraSweet is to think of it as a minute dose of nerve gas that eradicates brain and nerve functions. Some diseases triggered by aspartame include brain tumors and other cancers, Alzheimers, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, epilepsy, mental retardation, fibromyalgia, lymphoma, Graves disease, birth defects, chronic fatigue syndrome, systemic lupus, Epstein Barr, Parkinsons and ... death!
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology surveyed 80 people who suffered brain seizures after eating or drinking products with aspartame. Said the Community Nutrition Institute: "These 80 cases meet the FDWs own definition of an imminent hazard to the public health, which requires the FDA to expeditiously remove a product from the market."
America is seeing a tremendous increase in seizures. Phenylalanine in aspartame lowers the seizure threshold in the brain and blocks serotonin production. Today our nation is swept by a rage of violence. Researchers attribute this in part to low brain serotonin levels inducing depression, rage and paranoia. So President Clinton, Diet Coke in hand, programs billions of dollars to buy penitentiaries for the paranoid. Fetal tissue cannot tolerate methanol and Dr. James Bowen calls NutraSweet instant birth control. The fetal placenta can concentrate phenylalanine and cause mental retardation. Aspartame tests on animals produced brain and mammary tumors. During Operation Desert Storm truckloads of diet drinks cooked in the Arabian sun and at 86 degrees aspartame liberates methanol in the can! Thousands of service men and women returned home with chronic fatigue syndrome and weird toxic symptoms.
The synthesized components of Aspartame are Phenylalanine (50%), Aspartic Acid (40%) and 10% Methyl ester which converts to methanol. Methyl (wood) alcohol is poisonous to man when it stands alone. As a constitutient of other foods in nature, it is in combination with ethyl alcohol, which counteracts (or neutralizes) the ethanol as it is metabolized. (There is no ethyl alcohol is aspartame).
Methanol from aspartame is in "free form" and immediately absorbed into the bloodstream, then converts to formaldehyde. The formaldehyde converts to formic acid, (ant sting poison). Toxic formic acid is used as an activator for strip epoxy and urethane coatings. Both formaldehyde and formic acid are considered carcinogens.
Phenylalanine facilitates seizures, causes mental retardation in PKU indviduals lowers or blocks production of Serotonin, which results in increased craving for carbohydrates. Evidence shows that it is anything but a diet drink.
Aspartic acid is an excitotoxin, which has been shown to cause "holes" or lesions in the brains of mice.
On July 28, 1993, the National Soft Drink Association drafted a 30-page protest questioning the safety of aspartame in soft drinks. Then they found weight-conscious Americans would sip soda all day if it was sugarless, so they forgot their objections; nor did they tell us that aspartame makes you crave carbohydrates and so you gain weight. The formaldehyde stores in the fat cells, particularly on the hips and thighs. Drink diet soda, get fat now and later develop seizures, diabetes, blindness, Epstein Barr, MS, depression and death.
Similarly, the American Diabetic Association, which now receives mega-funds from NutraSweet, ignored a 1987 abstract submitted by Dr. H. J. Roberts (world expert on aspartame and diabetic specialist) summarizing 58 diabetic aspartame reactors. He says: "I now advise all patients with diabetes and hypoglycemia to avoid aspartame products." In his book Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills, Russell Blaylock, MD, a neurosurgeon, says aspartarne may trigger clinical diabetes! (This is the definitive text for those who need more information) He says that excitotoxins such as NutraSweet literally stimulate neurons to death, causing brain damage of varying degrees. "What really concerns me about aspartame," he says, "is its association with brain tumors as well as pancreatic, uterine and ovarian tumors. ... and that so many develop an Alzheimers-like syndrome with prolonged exposure."
Many will state that Nutrasweet has been carefully analyzed by scientists and found to be safe. An analysis of peer reviewed medical literature using MEDLINE and other databases was conducted by Ralph G. Walton, MD, Chairman, The Center for Behavioral Medicine, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine. Dr. Walton analyzed 164 studies which were felt to have relevance to human safety questions. Of those studies, 74 studies had aspartame industry-related sponsorship and 90 were funded without any industry money.
Of the 90 non-industry-sponsored studies, 83 (92%) identified one or more problems with aspartame. Of the 7 studies which did not find a problems, 6 of those studies were conducted by the FDA. Given that a number of FDA officials went to work for the aspartame industry immediately following approval (including the former FDA Commissioner), many consider these studies to be equivalent to industry-sponsored research. Of the 74 aspartame industry-sponsored studies, all 74 (100%) claimed that no problems were found with aspartame. This is reminiscent of tobacco industry research where it is primarily the tobacco research which never finds problems with the product, but nearly all of the independent studies do find problems.
The 74 aspartame industry-sponsored studies are those which one inveriably sees cited in PR/news reports and reported by organizations funded by Monsanto / Benevia / NutraSweet (e.g., IFIC, ADA). These studies have severe design deficiencies which help to guarantee the "desired" outcomes. These design deficiencies may not be apparent to the inexperienced scientist.
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