Aspartame - Industry Says 'No Evidence' Of Cancer
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A feeding study of aspartame on rats, published by researchers at the Italian Ramazzini Foundation in Environmental Health Perspectives, showed increased leukemia, lymphoma and some cancers, but now a review of an earlier government-funded study in the U.S. is touted as "rejecting aspartame risks".
"It goes a fair way toward allaying concerns about aspartame," said Michael Jacobson, head of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which had urged the government to review the sweetener's safety after a troubling rat study last year.Unfortunately, the relief provided by the new study is not so clear-cut as its promoters would have us believe. Betty Martini goes so far as to call it "cockamamie claptrap" in her recent comment published in the Idaho Observer.
Mark Gold is more careful in his analysis, but comes to the same conclusion. There are important reasons why the new study should not be construed as a "all clear" signal for the artificial sweetener.
The original aim of the government-sponsored study was not the evaluation of the effects of aspartame on humans, and the time period of consumption the study looked at - just 12 months - seems too short to say anything about the usual long-term consumption of the sweetener that is encouraged by industry and various diabetics associations...
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Aspartame and Cancer
Comment on the 2006 U.S. National Cancer Institute Research
by Mark Gold
In 2005, scientists from the European Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences (Italy) published research linking aspartame ingestion to lymphomas and leukemias as well as kidney and peripheral nerve tumors. (1)
In the research, aspartame was fed to rats from the time they were eight weeks old until natural death. The study was meant to simulate a lifetime of aspartame ingestion -- the equivalent of 50 to 90+ years of aspartame ingestion in humans. The results indicated that lifetime ingestion of even moderately low levels of aspartame caused lymphomas and leukemias in female rats. A significant increase in kidney and peripheral nerve cancer was also seen in the research. The scientists attributed this finding to the significant formaldehyde exposure from aspartame ingestion. Significant formaldehyde exposure and accumulation from aspartame ingestion has been seen in recent European research. (2)
Recently, there has been a flood of press releases related to a U.S. National Cancer Institute-sponsored study of aspartame and cancer. (3) The study involved 340,045 men and 226,945 women, ages 50 to 69. Participants in the study completed surveys in 1995 and 1996 that included several questions about diet beverage ingestion in the preceeding 12 months. No link was found between participants who ingested diet beverages in the preceeding 12 months and lymphomas, leukemias or brain tumors.
There are several obvious differences between the two studies. The study by the Ramazzini Foundation was an animal study, but was designed to simulate life-long ingestion of aspartame (e.g., 50 to 90+ years for humans). The study funded by the National Cancer Institute was a human study, but only looked a 12 months of diet beverage ingestion.
The questionnaire used in the National Cancer Institute study was not designed to provide a long-term history of dietary intake. It was designed to determine which types of foods the participants regularly ingested over the previous 12 months. Participants who used large amounts of aspartame from 1981 through 1994, but stopped before they received the survey would be classified as "non-users of aspartame." But participants who recently started to use aspartame in 1995 would be counted as "users of aspartame" even though they may have only used it for several months. Therefore, some people may have used aspartame for over a decade, but they would be classified as "non-users" while others may have used aspartame for only a few months and they would be classified as "users."
The questionnaire was not designed to calculate aspartame intake. There are no questions in the survey asking participants to estimate aspartame intake or even intake of a variety of common aspartame-containing products. In fact, only persons drinking diet beverages or coffee/tea with aspartame would be counted as aspartame users. A participant in this study could ingest hundreds of aspartame-containing products per week in the form of syrups, candy, gum, etc. and they would be classified as "non-users of aspartame" so long as that refrained from regular diet beverages ingestion.
While it is to be expected that the manufacturer of aspartame and their public relations organizations such as the Calorie Control Council will try to flood the media with press releases proclaiming safety, it is clear from a look at the questionnaire used in the National Cancer Institute-funded study that it was intended to look at only 12 months of diet beverage use and the Ramazzini Foundation study was designed to look at life-long use of aspartame. Negative findings in the National Cancer Institute-funded study are not surprising given the short period of time looked at.
In defense of the researchers involved in the National Cancer Institute-funded study, they have not claimed that their 12-month look at diet beverage use in relation to lymphomas, leukemias or brain tumors is in any way similar to the life-long use of aspartame looked at by the Ramazzini Foundation. The scientists involved in creating the questionnaire in the mid-1990's are aware of limitations of looking at only 12 months of diet history:
"Furthermore, a single [Food Frequency Questionnaire] FFQ-based measurement in adulthood may not represent long-term intake without error and may not assess the diet accurately for times when exposure is most critical in determining disease outcome." (4)The press releases claiming that aspartame does not cause cancer appear to originate from the aspartame manufacturer's public relations organizations.
Finally, as can be seen online or by looking at independent scientific research, cancer is just one of many aspartame toxicity concerns published in the scientific literature.
(1) Soffritti M, Belpoggi F, Degli Esposti D, Lambertini L, Tibaldi E, Rigano A, "First experimental demonstration of the multipotential carcinogenic effects of aspartame administered in the feed to Sprague-Dawley rats," Environmental Health Perspectives, Volume 114, Number 3, Pages 379-385, 2005.
www.ehponline.org/members/2005/8711/8711.pdf(2) Trocho, C., et al., 1998. "Formaldehyde Derived From Dietary Aspartame Binds to Tissue Components in vivo," Life Sciences, Vol. 63, No. 5, pp. 337+, 1998.
(3) Press Release: Five-Year, Government Funded, Epidemiology Study Shows No Risk Between Aspartame and Cancer
(4) Andrew Flood, Ellen M Velie, Nilanjan Chaterjee, Amy F Subar, Frances E Thompson, James V Lacey, Jr, Catherine Schairer, Rebecca Troisi and Arthur Schatzkin, "Fruit and vegetable intakes and the risk of colorectal cancer in the Breast Cancer Detection Demonstration Project follow-up cohort" American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 75, No. 5, 936-943, May 2002
Mark D. Gold
Aspartame/NutraSweet Toxicity Info Center
12 East Side Dr., #2-18
Concord, NH 03301
603-225-2110
mgold@holisticmed.com
http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/
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Betty Martini comments to the BBC upon an article titled "Drug firms 'inventing diseases":Perhaps the best way to say this is pharmaceutical and chemical firms are causing more diseases, and then making drugs to treat the problems they caused, which then interact. Searle was the original manufacturer of aspartame. The phenylalanine in aspartame lowers the seizure threshold and depletes serotonin. Lowered serotonin triggers psychiatric and behavioral problems and insomnia. So Searle made a drug for sleep.
Aspartame hardens the synovial fluids and along with the toxic breakdown of the poison causes agonizing joint pain many times called fibromyalgia. Dr. H. J. Roberts calls fibromyalgia a diagnostic junk bucket. So Searle made Celebrex, a horrible drug, for joint pain, which interacts with aspartame. Aspartame damages the mitochondria and therefore interacts with all drugs, the reason so many die from drug interaction no doubt.
Aspartame also is notorious in triggering restless leg. As to menopause, it is of interest that for years women took Premarin to be more vibrant. All of a sudden articles wrote that women were complaining that now they were experiencing chronic fatigue syndrome from the drug. Aspartame destroys the immune system and causes chronic fatigue, and it interacts with hormones big time. A University of Florida study years ago showed that if you omitted aspartame chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia disappeared.
Aspartame can trigger irritable bowel syndrome as well. Just look at the medical text: Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, www.sunsentpress.com by H. J. Roberts, M.D. It's all there, all of these diseases and the mechanism by which aspartame can trigger them.
So yes I would turn this around and say that pharmaceutical firms are causing these diseases and then making drugs to treat them. And that doesn't work with aspartame victims because the drugs interact and aggravate the problem.
As an example, aspartame is pushed on diabetics by the professional organizations and front groups who are funded by the manufacturers. Yet, aspartame can precipitate diabetes, aggravates and simulates diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy and destroys the optic nerve. It also interacts with insulin. So we have an epidemic of diabetes. The free methyl alcohol in aspartame converts to formaldehyde and formic acid and destroys the optic nerve, so look at all the laser surgery to treat the eye problems aspartame triggers.
After being on the market for over two decades research into scientific peer reviewed studies and funding reveals that 92 per cent of independent studies show the problems that aspartame can cause. Only studies funded and controlled by industry ever said it was safe. Searle originally did all sorts of things to try and prove a deadly excitoneurotoxic carcinogenic drug showed safety, and got caught. As the FDA audit shows they were even excising brain tumors from rats and then putting them back in the study. When they died they would resurrect them on paper. So the FDA asked for the indictment of Searle under Title 18, Section 1001, fraud. But the pharmaceutical industry is very powerful with bottomless checkbooks, and the bought the U.S. Prosecutors because they knew it was an open and shut case. Prosecutors Skinner and Conlon hired on with Searle's defense team and the statute of limitations expired. But still the FDA would not approve this poison so Don Rumsfeld said he would call in his markers and get it approved regardless of their refusal and regardless of the fact that it is a deadly poison. Here James Turner, Washington DC Attorney who tried along with Dr. John Olney to prevent approval, explains how Rumsfeld did this deadly deed: A clip from Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World (www.amazon.com) : Here is a promo to the film.
Now that the Ramazzini Study in Italy, peer reviewed by 7 world experts, has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt the same thing the FDA found, that aspartame is a multipotential carcinogen, efforts have been made to fabricate a study to rebut it. A multifood form 16 pages long with 56 questions completed a decade ago, was claimed to be an aspartame cancer study. Aspartame was only mentioned once when asked if you drank coffee and tea, and if not to skip to number 27 and tell us if you use vitamins. The aspartame manufacturers admit to this toxin being in 6000 products, yet on this form there were no questions about whether you used any of them or whether you took them for years, since only 12 months was the time limit. As Dr. Ralph Walton said, if you did a 12 month study on whether smoking caused cancer you would conclude that smoking does not cause cancer. If these elderly people who filled out the form, and even could remember what they took in the last 12 months, checked they used regular soda pop again they would not be counted as using aspartame. Yet in l995 they could have been using Fresca or Tab, both with aspartame.
Then front groups like the Calorie Control Council tout this as showing aspartame is safe. The American Dietetics Assn is just as bad, often called Monsanto's media flacks. The experts, of course, immediately exposed this bogus study. You will note that Dr. Russell Blaylock comments on the Ramazzini Study as well as this new bogus study. And Dr. Roberts not only comments, but his peer reviewed journal article about 15 years ago exposed the aspartame lymphoma link. The Ramazzini study showed aspartame causes lymphoma, leukemia, kidney cancer and cancer of the cranial peripheral nerves.
Today, the FDA is simply an extension of industry and has given their complete loyalty to the pharmaceutical and cancer industry. They find employment at the FDA to be a bureaucrat so they can become a plutocrat. They have absolutely no interest in safe food and drugs and are responsible for approving poisons. As proof of this, while their own records show aspartame to be a chemical poison, and they themselves originally wanted the company indicted, they lie to the public and protect the pharmaceutical and chemical industry. There is a law that says if someone files a Citizens Petition they must answer in 180 days, and not to do so means they have committed a crime. I filed a Citizens Petition to ban aspartame 4 years ago in June, and they refuse to answer saying they have more important things to do. Here is the petition.
The FDA not only protects the pharmaceutical industry but tries to help them take over our vitamins and herbs. The FDA knows without a shadow of a doubt that aspartame damages the cardiac conduction system and causes death. The FDA has this report and others but when the athletes started dropping dead they used ephedra as the cause and banned it. Dr. John Olney is on the Ephedra Council and reviewed the complaints at the FDA. What they had was a comedy to read. In one case a man left his wife and didn't go to church and the cause was given as ephedra. There were some problems, not with natural Ma-Haung, but with the pharmaceutical kind where they synthesized it. Showing you it doesn't matter what the pharmaceutical companies do they left the synthesized drug version on the market and took off the safe Ma-Haung. They removed ephedra because of an athlete who dropped dead in West Palm Beach. An investigation into his diet habits found that he was worried about his fluctuating weight and was going without food for a couple of days and then using nothing but Diet Coke all day sweetened with aspartame. The athlete no doubt was just another aspartame murder. And when Ephedra was put back on the market they only allowed a small amount, so there would be little necessity to use it since the dose would be too low. Recently the FDA bragged on their web site that they had found someone here in Georgia who was selling a little more, and how happy they were to protect the people from this harmless and useful product being used for thousands of years.
In the meantime, millions of people all over the world are dying from neurodegenerative diseases, drug interactions, cancers and birth defects for starters. As I have heard Doctors Roberts and Blaylock say a lot of people in mental hospitals today are simply aspartame victims.
Talking about aspartame murders, Charles Fleming, a basketball playing athlete and body builder, who used aspartame pop and other products with this toxin, died. On the autopsy it showed death from methanol poisoning. It also showed chronic methanol poisoning which showed he had been using it for years. You saw the usual things you would see in an aspartame victim, the fatty liver, pulmonary edema, and cardiomegaly (enlarged heart), and metabolic acidosis. The doctor in the case not knowing what caused the methanol poisoning, and completely unaware that aspartame liberates free methyl alcohol, told his wife Diane to call the police. She did and also took a polygraph test. The police report says the polygraph showed she was truthful. So the police knew Diane had nothing to do with it, and the detective on the case told me personally he would have never allowed her to be indicted but all of a sudden he was promoted and taken off the case. Diane Fleming, a sweet Sunday School teacher lost not only her husband to the aspartame murderers but also her children, her home and her freedom. She was sentenced to 30 and 20 years and now resides in a Virginia prison.
Doctors looking at the autopsy report and realizing Fleming died from aspartame wrote affidavits. The medical examiner, Dr. Marcella Fierro, agreed to talk to Dr. H. J. Roberts about it but cancelled appointments. Then she said she would have a phone conference on a certain date during a meeting for that purpose. At that time she said she wouldn't talk to him because there was no peer reviewed journal article on aspartame and methanol. She said this while holding in her hand the peer reviewed journal article, Aspartame: Methanol and the Public Health by Dr. Woodrow Monte: So we decided to investigate Dr. Fierro and found other cases she had been involved in including the Vince Foster case. The Artificially Sweetened Times published by the Idaho Observer (www.idaho-observer.com) which are distributed to warn the public about aspartame carried the story: "Fleming's chances for post-conviction relief dashed by medical examiner capable of moving bullet wounds for political reasons". She was reported to the Virginia Medical Board, Grievance Committee, by myself and Dr. H. J. Roberts, and they reviewed the case for a long time but allowed Fierro not to be punished. More investigation is needed for Fierro's other links to people like Senator Orrin Hatch who was paid by Monsanto and who prevented aspartame congressional hearings for so long. There were many errors in the two day trial so a powerful habeas was written and for some strange reason was turned down. Now we are asking for help to get this Sunday School teacher and mother of three out of prison, for as the detective on the case said, "Diane Fleming is an innocent woman and never should have been indicted."
As Dr. James Bowen wrote the FDA years ago, the people responsible for putting aspartame on the market and those working to keep it on the market should be criminally prosecuted.
The pharmaceutical industry has lots of influence and power, and they have to have endless checkbooks to keep it. No wonder drugs are so expensive. As one man said, his insurance company would not pay for the second month's of pills because they would cost $2800.00 - 30 pills. The elderly try to get their medication in Canada because living on a set income they can't afford the pharmaceutical company's outrageous fees. So the FDA, industry's handmaiden has worked to prevent consumers from getting them cheaper in Canada. The same pharmaceutical drugs purchased in the US are sent to Canada, and they are sealed, but FDA's excuse is that they are not safe. A burglar would have a better alibi.
So perhaps this title should be turned around to show the real problem. Many of these diseases are created by the aspartame manufacturers using a deadly excitoneurotoxic carcinogen drug that interacts with all drugs and vaccines. Shame on the FDA who has given them their loyalty and sold out the people. As Mr. Horton, Editor of the Lancet said years ago, the FDA endangers the lives of the people by taking money from industry.
When those responsible to solve the problem ARE the problem they should be removed from office and prosecuted like they prosecute innocent health food people selling a little bit of a healthful drug. To show you how industry cares not for the lives of the people when they got ahold of the vitamins in England they added aspartame, even though you swallow them. Then they can sell more of these drugs that interact with the poison. However, you look at it the pharmaceutical and chemical industry - they are guilty. They not only invent disease but create it.
Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum
Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770 242-2599
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See also:
CLAIMS THAT ASPARTAME SAFETY PROVED BY DIETARY SURVEY REVEAL SWEET POISON FRONT GROUPS. EXPERTS SPEAK
By Dr. Betty Martini
Desperate to reverse growing public awareness and scientific proof that the artificial sweetener aspartame is a deadly neurotoxin, the Calorie Control Council (CCC) issued a press release stating that a federal food survey proves that aspartame is safe. The move is seen by many to be a face-saving gesture by the CCC, a self-described weigh-loss advocacy group, that has been advising a calorie-conscious public to use this non-caloric, excitoneurotoxic, carcinogenic drug since the 80s. They are a Public Relations organization, well known as an aspartame front group...
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Tuesday April 11 2006
updated on Thursday December 16 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/04/11/aspartame_industry_says_no_evidence_of_cancer.htm
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December 01, 2005 - Sepp Hasslberger
