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Winning The Aspartame War!
By Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum
September 19, 2009

Life is full of ironies. The May 7, 1985, Senate Congressional Record listed charges made against aspartame by the very industry that was to later become its largest customer, the soft drink makers. At the time, the makers submitted their “Objections of the National Soft Drink Association to a Final Rule Permitting the Use of Aspartame in Carbonated Beverages,” which included these admissions:

"G. D. Searle and Company has not demonstrated to a reasonable certainty that the use of aspartame in soft drinks will not adversely affect human health as a result of the changes such use is likely to cause in brain chemistry.

Searle has not demonstrated to a reasonable certainty that aspartame and its degradation products are safe for use in soft drinks aspartame is inherently, markedly and uniquely unstable in aqueous media. The extensive deficiencies in the stability studies conducted by Searle render those studies inadequate and unreliable"

This organization became the American Beverage Association (ABA). Searle knew that its product was toxic, so they submitted fraudulent test reports to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Surprisingly, but to its credit, the FDA asked the Department of Justice to prosecute Searle, an action taken only once before in history. What to do? Searle lawyers hired the Federal prosecutors and the case died when the statute of limitations was exceeded. It cannot be resurrected! Political Checkmate!

Off to the Moon!

Aspartame/NutraSweet/Equal took off like a rocket and were soon in thousands of foods, even pharmaceuticals, spreading neurodegenerative diseases nationwide, Worldwide, a rampage that is continuing to this very day. The symptoms of aspartame disease are generally not immediate but are often diverse and dispersed, progressing gradually, cumulatively, so the consumer is unable to recognize what is destroying him. In1995, the FDA listed nearly 100 reactions, from sexual dysfunction, disorientation, seizures, and headaches to depreciating eyesight and death; derived from 10,000 consumer complaints. In fact, FDA has received more complaints on aspartame than have ever been brought against another additive. Yet, not to its credit, the FDA suddenly became deaf and shut their complaint window so that FDA would be dumb too. FDA officials then took sweet jobs in the aspartame industry.

Adult soft drink sales are flat, so our kids are the target, as a January 1999 article in Beverage explained: Influencing elementary school students is very important to soft drink marketers. So, schools are bribed with pop machine commissions. One high school in Beltsville, Maryland alone got almost $100,000 in just a year for selling out student health that way. The ABA measures soft-drink consumption at over 600 twelve-ounce servings per person per year.

Since 1978, soda consumption has tripled for boys and doubled for girls. Males ages 12-29 are the biggest consumers, at over 160 gallons per year, nearly two quarts a day. Single-size servings, once 6-12 ounces, have been increased to 20-ounce bottles, and now they push the 64-ounce “Double Gulp” cups. More! More! More!

The non-profit Weston A. Price Foundation published a comprehensive report by Judith Valentine, Ph.D, that lays it on the line:

"The consumption of soft drinks is riddled with hazards. We as practitioners and advocates of a healthy life-style recognize that consuming even as little as one or two sodas per day is undeniably connected to a myriad of pathologies obesity, diabetes and other blood sugar disorders, tooth decay, osteoporosis and bone fractures, nutritional deficiencies, heart disease, food addictions and eating disorders, neurotransmitter dysfunction from chemical sweeteners and neurological and adrenal disorders from excessive caffeine."

Yet Sales Slow as Dominos Begin to Fall

The mass media – greedy for Coke & Pepsi advertising dollars – ignores this disaster. What matter the health of our people? But consumers are not fools. Victims are telling their friends, their doctors, everyone. Renowned physicians write books and the Internet explodes with thousands of case histories. Radio hosts educate on talk shows. This tide of information and public awareness is drowning aspartame and its makers. One producer, Chicago's Merisant, went bankrupt this January and Holland Sweetener, Europe's largest aspartame producer, terminated its operations in 2006.

The reporting website, Packaged Facts/RI, reveals retail sales of Equal fell 43% and those of NutraSweet even more from 2003 to 2007. Coke and Pepsi now scramble to new sweets to duck the aspartame curse. Sales of diet drinks are dwindling. This defeat is in the face of frantic lobbying and PR campaigns by the surviving manufacturers, particularly Japan's Ajinomoto.

But the dominos are beginning to fall. Under the title "Toxic Properties of Aspartame" in 2006, U.K. Parliamentarian Roger Williams wrote: "The House expresses deep concern over the numerous independent toxicological studies and thousands of subjective reports attesting to the toxic effects of the artificial sweetener aspartame on human health and urges the Government to abide by the precautionary principle and make use of Statutes 13 and 16 of the 1990 Food Safety Act to remove aspartame from the permitted list of additives on the UK market." 46 Members of England's House of Commons in Parliament signed in agreement. Efforts continue in the United Kingdom.

By this November, the European Food Safety Authority will again review aspartame, but the Agency includes "experts" financially linked to the aspartame industry. EFSA's Dr. Koeter confessed this influence in the article "EU’s Food Agency Battles Attempts to Hijack Science," when he wrote:

"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. Along the way he also described the various political pressures EFSA faces as it strives to maintain a firm line between its independent scientific research and the mire of EU politics. Hot decisions that had political repercussions included a review of a controversial aspartame study."

Dr. Koeter left the Agency. Bully for him! The battle continues in Europe.

Efforts to Ban Aspartame Move Forward

Having lectured in Ireland recently, I helped to get Mission Possible Ireland started as well as their aim to get aspartame banned in that country. There are also efforts underway to ban aspartame in Indonesia and South Africa.

In New Mexico, the notable Stephen Fox drafted legislation to ban it in that State, which was scuttled in the Rules Committee by senators swigging Diet Coke. The swarm of lobbyists from Coke and Ajinomoto was so thick that honest and disgusted Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino wrote a scathing denunciation of the process.

Stephen Fox, of Mission Possible New Mexico, and I wrote a Resolution asking the FDA to rescind approval of aspartame. Many members in both Houses in Hawaii signed on as sponsors of the Resolution, but it never got considered because two men blocked it. Senator David Ige refused to schedule it for a hearing in the Senate, and Representative Ryan Yamane would not schedule it for a hearing in the House. Senator Ige, who drinks Diet Coke, not only refused to schedule a hearing but even refused phone calls from prominent physicians. He obviously put his habit before the health of Hawaiians.

City Councilor Numero Lim reports an ordinance to ban aspartame is in line for consideration in Manila, the Philippines, while Romania banned aspartame because it causes cancer.

News of the Abby Cormack story continues in New Zealand. This beautiful young actress was nearly destroyed by Wrigley's aspartame-sweetened chewing gum and Diet Coke. Today, most gums contain this toxin, which is particularly serious because being buccal it works like nitroglycerin under the tongue, goes through saliva straight to the brain. I lectured in New Zealand and publicity continued through radio, television, newspapers, and magazines. Sales of Diet Coke and gum dropped to such an extent that Coke sponsored a PR campaign to try and convince people the poison was safe. It didn’t work. Alison White, of the New Zealand Safe Food Campaign, said aspartame gum sales have dropped by 50% and Diet Coke sales have decreased as well.

In Canada, the British Columbia Ministry of Education removed all artificial sweeteners from primary and middle schools after consultations with parents, this despite the position of Health Canada – their FDA – that chemical sweeteners are safe. "Consultations with parents," did you hear that?

A 2007 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article entitled "Diet Coke Sales Lose Fizz" reported that "Diet Coke is facing its most serious threat yet after 25 years as one of the world's most popular drinks." Atlanta is Coke's hometown, and mine too.

Dr. Blaylock on Aspartame1

Recently, Dr. Russell Blaylock, author of Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills gave an interview and went into the cancer issue in some detail. He said "Excitotoxins have been found to dramatically promote cancer growth and metastasis." The aspartic acid in aspartame is an excitotoxin, as is Monosodium Glutamate (MSG).

Dr. Blaylock continued, "When you increase the glutamate level cancer just grows like wildfire, and then when you block glutamate, it dramatically slows the growth of the cancer." In discussing the famous Ramazzini Study he said, "This Italian study was very well done. It was a lifetime study, which is very important with these toxins. They fed animals aspartame throughout their lives and let them die a natural death. They found a dramatic and statistically significant increase in the related cancers of lymphoma and leukemia, along with several histological types of lymphomas, which is of interest because H. J. Roberts, M.D. (Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic) had written an article saying that there was a significant increase in the primary lymphoma of the brain."

"What the Italian study found is that if you take these same animals and expose them to formaldehyde in the same doses, they developed the same leukemias and lymphomas. If you look back at the Trocho Study conducted in Spain . . . what they found was when they radiolabeled the aspartame, they could actually see formaldehyde binding to the DNA, and it produced both single and double strand DNA breakage.

"When you look it up in the neurosurgical literature, there is a rather significant rise in the incidence of what used to be a rare tumor. We're seeing a lot more of the primary lymphoma of the brain, which is a little different than lymphomas you see elsewhere. When you look back at the original studies done by the G. D. Searle company, they found lymphomas as well as primary brain tumors and tumors of multiple organs. All of this correlation shows that we've got a powerful carcinogenic substance here. It is either acting as a co-carcinogen or a primary carcinogen. Most likely, it's the formaldehyde breakdown product."

Aspartame is a Carcinogen

Two long-term studies conducted on over 2,000 rats at the European Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences at the Ramazzini Institute concluded that Aspartame is "a multi-potential carcinogen." At the New York Mount Sinai Medical Center, a leading scientist, Dr. Morando Soffritti, received the Irving Selkoff award for his outstanding research on the subject.

Interestingly, the National Cancer Institute funded a study that just this year showed a link between formaldehyde and leukemia/lymphoma. And while the EPA had listed formaldehyde as a probable human carcinogen in 1987, in 2004, the International Agency for Research on Cancer went further, classifying formaldehyde as a "known human carcinogen" based partly on research suggesting a link to leukemia. In this context, then, one can certainly understand the Ramazzini Studies showing aspartame as causing leukemia and lymphoma. Think of diet drinks as formaldehyde cocktails. Dr. Morando Soffritti, in his study, said there was so much formaldehyde the rats’ hair turned yellow.

In New Zealand, there was much publicity when formaldehyde was found in pajamas. Dr. Woodrow Monte, who authored the journal article “Aspartame, Methanol and the Public Health” wrote: "If you are concerned about formaldehyde in your pajamas, then think twice about taking it with your breakfast cereal. Aspartame or Equal, the controversial sweetener virtually forced down the throats of the American FDA by the notorious former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (the president of the company that produced it), turns into Formaldehyde inside your children's bodies. It is well known aspartame or Equal (E951/951) turns into wood alcohol when it is consumed, however, few people realize this wood alcohol morphs into formaldehyde in the cells of the human body. Formaldehyde is a Class 1 causing agent (the world class of carcinogens) and is responsible for everything from sick house syndrome to birth defects. Definitely something we don't want to see in Pajamas but most certainly not in our food."

The shame of all this is that it was known that aspartame caused cancer in the very beginning. The FDA tried to have the manufacturer indicted for fraud because they were doing such things as excising brain tumors from rats, putting them back in the study, and when they died resurrecting them on paper. They simply could not get a study to show safety. The FDA even revoked the petition for approval but through the political chicanery of Don Rumsfeld it was marketed in 1981. Immediately the population began to complain of everything from seizures to multiple sclerosis; and finally there were three Congressional hearings. Even FDA toxicologists continued to speak out.

FDA 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, Dr. 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?" See Congressional Record SID835:131 (August 1, l985).

FDA toxicologist Dr. Jacqueline Verrett said all of the pro-aspartame studies were built upon a foundation of sand and should have been thrown out. She told Congress in 1987 that aspartame had still not been proven safe, even after its approval in 1981.

In a conversation I had with Jerome Bressler, who with a team of scientists did the FDA audit, the Bressler Report, he explained that two mouse studies were so badly conducted that when the FDA retyped the report they removed them from the report. Roberts and Blaylock also spoke with Bressler, and Dr. Roberts even tried to get his Congressman to get the missing data. The FDA refused to release it.

As Dr. Blaylock said, "We know that when formaldehyde binds to DNA, it's very difficult to remove it. It will stay there for long periods of time. What that means is if you just drink a single diet cola today, or sweeten something with NutraSweet, you're accumulating damage every day. Eventually, you're going to produce this necessary pattern of DNA damage to initiate the cancer, and once you develop the cancer, the aspartic acid component of aspartame will make the cancer grow very rapidly. You've got a double effect; it's causing the cancer, and it's making the cancer multiple very rapidly."

Aspartame’s cancer-causing feature makes it illegal for sale within the United States; but it is also illegal to sell or distribute adulterated foods. Aspartame acts like a drug and because of damage to the mitochondria interacts with other drugs and vaccines. In fact, many drugs contain aspartame in the very medication used to treat the symptoms aspartame causes. For instance, headache is Number One on the FDA’s list of 92 symptoms. Maxalt by Merck contains aspartame. A study done on Maxalt showed with the aspartame in it, it caused more headaches but the company has refused to remove it. Aspartame is a seizure-triggering drug mentioned five times in the FDA report. Yet Ketocal for seizures has aspartame in it.

How Much Worse Can It Get?

Aspartame triggers an irregular heart rhythm and interacts with all cardiac medication. It damages the cardiac conduction system and causes sudden death. Dr. Blaylock wrote a Pilot and Athlete Alert because of this. The Trocho Study shows that the formaldehyde embalms living tissue and damages DNA. When you damage DNA, you can destroy humanity. In Dr. Robert’s medical text he even has a page on pre-embalming and says that this is forbidden for Jewish people.

Dr. Blaylock says you need to abstain from aspartame and MSG and the weight of the evidence is overwhelming. If you want to avoid obesity, metabolic syndrome, neurodegenerative diseases, and cancer, and if you don't want to make your cancer more aggressive, then you need to stay away from these products.

Around the World consumers are learning dread results of aspartame consumption and ditching it. The aspartame industry continues to try and defeat legislative initiatives even while they go broke. There is a great victory being achieved by citizen action, with zero funding, overwhelming the financial resources and clout of the poisoners. Hundreds of products contain it no more. And millions of people consume it no more.

Help remove aspartame from your State or country. To get your Senator or Representative to sponsor a bill, simply read the information from the National Health Federation website (http://www.thenhf.com/press_releases/pr_24_feb_2009.html) and then take action.

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Dr. Betty Martini for 18 years is the founder of the worldwide volunteer force, Mission Possible World Health International, which is committed to removing aspartame from our food supply. She has an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree for the work she has done. She has 22 years of experience in the medical field. In 1970 Dr. Martini established a model for the nation by creating Physicians on Call, a network of five Emergency Care clinics in Atlanta, Georgia staffed with medical doctors 7 days/24 hours. Services were without cost to the indigent. She speaks frequently on nationwide radio hookups for talk programs throughout the country and the world. The medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, by H. J. Roberts, M.D., is dedicated to her. She can be seen in the aspartame documentary, Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World. She has three grown children, two sons and a daughter. She may be reached at email address: bettym19@mindspring.com