Dr. Von Eschenbach:

You wrote Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino and eleven members of the New Mexico Legislative Education Committee about the aspartame recall.  I assume the aspartame people wrote it for you since it's in their words. FDA gets most of its money from the drug/chemical industry, and it's obvious your allegiance is to corporate sugar-daddies, not Americans.

You say, "These and other relevant safety issues have been addressed and thoroughly evaluated by FDA, as well as other regulatory bodies in the United States and around the world, including the National Institutes of Health, European Food Safety Agency, Scientific Committee for Foods of the European Union, Health Canada, and others.  These agencies are all in agreement that aspartame is safe for the general population with the exception of individuals with Phenylketonuria."

To the contrary, FDA evaluated aspartame thoroughly, then asked the Department of Justice to prosecute the original manufacturer, G. D. Searle Co. for fraud.  This is the first such action ever taken by your agency, an indication of how serious their crimes were. Then both U.S. Prosecutors, Sam Skinner & William Conlon, hired on with the defense attorneys and let the statute of limitations expire so they can never be prosecuted.

Jerome Bressler's FDA Audit, The Bressler Report, on www.dorway.com, exposed the lawless acrobatics of Searle to prove the drug is safe.  They couldn't do it and got caught.  I spoke with Jerome Bressler who said his report was so bad that FDA retyped it, removing the worst 20%. The fraud was too horrific to print.  Dr. H. J. Roberts asked his congressman to get the missing data, but  FDA said it was confidential.  FDA is above Congress?

In 1980 FDA found aspartame unsafe and revoked the petition for approval.
http://www.wnho.net/fda_petition1.doc  In the commentary above the FDA's report you will notice a clip from Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World where James Turner, Atty, explains how Don Rumsfeld called in his markers to get approval after the FDA had denied it.  You also know this because you have this letter, which you refused to answer:

http://www.wnho.net/project_recall_aspartame.htm

This gives the whole story from FDA records, including those exposing aspartame cancer.  Included is the statement from the FDA toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, telling Congress that aspartame violates the Delaney Amendment because without a shadow of a doubt it caused brain tumors and brain cancer.

You lie when you tell the New Mexico legislature that the FDA agrees aspartame is safe, and their records prove it.  FDA reported 92 symptoms from over 10,000 volunteered consumer complaints: four kinds of seizures, coma, sexual dysfunction, and death.  Dr. H. J.  Roberts medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, lists many more plus neurodegenerative diseases, epidemic diabetes, obesity, tumors, drug interactions, pre-embalming, birth defects, psychiatric and behavioral diseases, and sudden death.  Dr. Roberts is a world aspartame expert who treated aspartame victims in the trenches of medical practice for decades.  His Congressional testimony is on record.

You name the European Food Safety Agency, which was pressured and controlled to produce a ludicrous report blaming cancers in the Ramazzini Study on respiratory disease.  Dr. M. Soffritti answered this excuse, stating that respiratory disease is part of the dying process.  Later EFSA admitted that industry was attempting to hi-jack science, which report I sent you:
http://www.rense.com/general73/openn.htm

EFSA was reported to the International Court of Justice and the UN for lying.  So why didn't you give the legislature the facts, Dr. Von Eschenbach?

Nobody knows what the European Union did for aspartame makers better than I, since I was there. I flew to Brussels with all the damning research and original FDA documents that revoked the petition for approval.  In the two hour meeting I provided a stack of research including Dr. John Olney's 49 page testimony to the Board of Inquiry on what aspartame would do to the brains of our children if approved. I gave briefs on how aspartame makers fix studies and examples of studies flaunted as safe though obviously flawed.

The EU received Dr. Ralph Walton's research showing 92 % of independent and unbiased scientific peer reviewed studies showed the problems aspartame causes.  He stated if you remove 6 studies by FDA and one pro-industry summary, 100% of such research shows aspartame is unsafe.  The manufacturer couldn't prove aspartame safety in original studies and they can't do it now.

Aspartame makers use the International Life Sciences Institute, ILSI, a phony research front group that hands out money for rigged studies.  Read about them in the 8-month investigation of United Press International.  As one employee informant told me, "If you wanta payola you musta rollova."  I showed the 1038 page medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic by H. J. Roberts, M.D. at the meeting.  As expected, they were entirely disinterested, and totally omitted his research because it was too damning.  They didn't know I was wired.   Here's the rebuttal to the EU report, prepared by Mark Gold of the Aspartame Toxicity Center.
http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/scf2002.html

While FDA refused aspartame approval for years, the producers went to Health Canada, which also refused.  Later it had been rubberstamped by other countries so Health Canada blessed it. Now HC is as much a part of industry as the FDA.  They've been written repeatedly for years, sent research, but don't answer.

Dr. Von Eschenbach, I'm particularly disgusted when you write: "FDA closely monitors the scientific literature for information that might indicate a potential public health concern with a food additive including aspartame, even after an additive has been approved."  If that were true, aspartame would've been gone years ago.  It was admitted in Congress that FDA was so swamped with complaints they referred them to the AIDS Hotline to get rid of them. When complaints increased FDA slammed shut the complaint window, and in l996 deleted hundreds of complaints to whitewash and minimize aspartame toxicity.

For years there has been constant scientific research damning aspartame.  The rigorous 3-year Ramazzini study proved aspartame is a multi-potential carcinogen.  A study from Greece showed memory loss (Alzheimers). Liverpool research proved drug interaction. Norway proved aspartame destroys the brain. Another of their studies showed aspartame binds to calcium.  Sharon Fowler's study, University of Texas, linked obesity with diet drinks.   From Barcelona came the damning Trocho Study, proving aspartame embalms living tissue.  I just returned from Barcelona, conferred with a researcher who was threatened by NutraSweet.  If the industry can't control a study with damning results they employ Gestapo tactics and threat of career destruction.

Likewise, FDA ignored my petition for recall submitted 4 years ago.  The law requires a citizens petition to be answered in 180 days, but you simply break the law.

I'm appalled that you say: "FDA is currently evaluating the significance of a recent study with aspartame conducted by the European Ramazzini Foundation.  To date, the agency has not been presented with any credible scientific information that would support a change in its conclusions about the safety of aspartame."  The Ramazzini work was done by a world-renowned independent research organization on 1,800 rats for 3 years. It is the most precise ever, and confirmed your own findings that aspartame causes cancer.  Why isn't it credible?  Because you don't like the results! And when it comes to results you don't like you couldn't find a gorilla in a phone booth.  If Ramazzini said aspartame is safe as gum drops you'd shout the world over.  You duplicitously renounce all studies proving toxicity, and so sentence an entire population to slowing poisoning!

Then you say:  "If the agency is presented with such information that indicates a potential public health concern with aspartame, FDA will take appropriate action to protect the public health.  "I believe that's the biggest lie I've ever heard."  The FDA has been presented with this information in three congressional hearings with their own FDA toxicologists who were on site admitting aspartame should never have been approved and is not safe.  Dr. Jacqueline Verrett, FDA toxicologist, testified in l987 that 6 years after approval aspartame had not been proven safe, and Searle's studies were built on a foundation of sand and should have been thrown out.

FDA has study after study after study showing aspartame toxicity, and ignores all of them.  Many doctors have written books and papers exposing to the world the horrors of this poison.  Mission Possible operations worldwide educate the public and help victims.  The epidemic is enormous, and cases flood in from every part of the world.

Dr. Von Eschenbach, what do you consider a public health concern?  Could it be the millions of babies being killed in the womb because aspartame is an abortifacient and teratogen? Could it be the victims dropping dead?
http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_msg_scd.htm

Or perhaps the hazard to aviation with pilots having seizures or dying in flight?

What is a public health concern?  Tell New Mexico's legislature why you ignore all independent studies on aspartame, even by renowned researchers, and yet every self-serving flawed report by aspartame makers is fine with FDA.  You say you hope the legislature will find your information useful.  Lies are not useful.

Senator Ortiz y Pino's report on the lobbyists' presents the real picture. It is included in this cover story on aspartame in Health Freedom News:
http://www.thenhf.com/articles_408.htm

Dr. Adrian Gross' words to Congress must not be forgotten: "If the FDA violates its own laws who is left to protect the public?"  Your own toxicologist testified against you!  When FDA loyalty is to the drug cartel instead of the people, it has no right to exist.
http://www.wnho.net/the_ecologist_aspartame_report.htm


Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum, Founder
Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770 242-2599

Reports and studies mentioned in this letter can be found on http://www.wnho.net/, www.dorway.com  and http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame
 

cc:  New Mexico Legislature


FDA propaganda:

TEXT OF DR. VON ESCHENBACH'S letter in Response to Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino and eleven members of the New Mexico Legislative Education Committee.

Dear Senator Ortiz y Pino:

Thank you for your letter of October 18th, co-signed by Members of the New Mexico Legislative Education Committee. In your letter, you request that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rescind its approval of the food additive aspartame. In particular, you raise concerns about the formation of the aspartame metabolites methanol and formaldehyde, and about the potential for formation of diketopiperazine when aspartame is heated.

I want to assure you that these and other relevant safety issues have been addressed and thoroughly evaluated by FDA, as well as other regulatory bodies in the United States and around the world, including the National Institutes of Health, European Food Safety Agency, Scientific Committee for Foods of the European Union, Health Canada, and others. These agencies are all in agreement that aspartame is safe for the general population with the exception of those individuals with Phenylketonuria. To protect phenylketonurics, any food containing aspartame must bear a conspicuous statement on the label that indicates that the product contains phenylalanine.

FDA closely monitors the scientific literature for information that might indicate a potential public health concern with a food additive, including Aspartame, even after an additive has been approved.

For example, FDA is currently evaluating the significance of a recent study with aspartame conducted by the European Ramazzini Foundation. To date, the agency has not been presented with any credible scientific information that would support a change in its conclusions about the safety of aspartame. If the agency is presented with such information that indicates a potential public health concern with aspartame, FDA will take appropriate action to protect the public health.

Thank you for your interest in the safety of American consumers. I appreciate your correspondence and hope you find this information helpful

Sincerely,

Andrew Von Eschenbach, M.D.
Acting Commissioner of Food and Drugs

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE SPEAK WITH ANDREW VON ESCHENBACH (301) 827-2410
SENATOR ORTIZ Y PINO, (505) 250-1280
UNITED STATES SECRETARY FOR HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES