UK: Ban Aspartame Says Member of Parliament

H. J. Roberts, M.D., who testified before Congress warned at his first press conference if something wasn't done then we would have a global plague on our hands in five or ten years. And indeed it was Dr. Roberts who declared Aspartame Disease to be a global plague and published a 1038 page medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, www.sunsentpress.com

Having poisoned the world more and more consumers call the plague - Rumsfeld Disease. Obviously had he not called in those bloody markers the revoked petition for approval would have prevented the marketing of this chemical poison for human consumption and the disability and death it causes. Cori Brackett and J. T. Walden, co-owners of Sound and Fury Productions who produced Sweet Misery will soon have a new documentary to release titled Sweet Remedy. A remedy is needed to save aspartame victims. Cori Brackett is an aspartame victim who was diagnosed with MS. Off aspartame she walked out of her wheelchair to make this film. Eight months off aspartame her large lesion all but disappeared.

Obviously the first step is a ban and efforts continue around the world. Stephen Fox has petitioned the Environmental Improvement Board and Board of Pharmacy to ban it from New Mexico. http://www.wnho.net/viva_new_mexico.htm Robin Goodwin has asked for a ban in the Falkland Islands and Lane Shore has asked it be removed from schools in Illinois. Attorneys are taking aspartame brain tumor cases in New York, New Jersey, Madison County Illinois and Mississippi. See form on www.wnho.net

Aspartame is marketed as NutraSweet, Equal, E951, Canderel, Benevia, etc. For those who have used the toxin neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D., wrote "What To Do If You Have Used Aspartame": http://www.wnho.net/wtdaspartame.htm

For the whole story and time line read the Ecologist's cover story, "The Shocking Story of the World's Best Selling Sweetener: http://www.wnho.net/the_ecologist_aspartame_report.htm

Read on for the breaking news. I leave the aspartame manufacturers who with full knowledge knew they were marketing a neurotoxic drug, the words of Mohammed Ali: "You can run but you can't hide!" And especially today we add the immortal admonition of another great athlete, baseball's Satchel Paige: "Never look back, something might be gaining on you!" It's the victims you poisoned. http://www.wnho.net/recipe_for_death.htm

Dr. Betty Martini,D.Hum., Founder, Mission Possible Intl, 9270 River Club Parkway, Duluth, Georgia
30097 770 242-2599 http://www.wnho.net and http://www.dorway.com

Aspartame Toxicity Center, www.holisticmed.com/aspartame

Two Articles in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1667734,00.html

MP calls for ban on 'unsafe' sweetener

Felicity Lawrence, consumer affairs correspondent
Thursday December 15, 2005
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk

A member of the parliamentary select committee on food and the environment yesterday called for emergency action to ban the artificial sweetener aspartame, used in 6,000 food, drink and medicinal products. The Liberal Democrat MP Roger Williams said in an adjournment debate in the Commons that there was "compelling and reliable evidence for this carcinogenic substance to be banned from the UK food and drinks market altogether". In licensing aspartame for use, regulators around the world had failed in their main task of protecting the public, he told MPs. Mr Williams highlighted new concerns about the additive's safety, raised by a recent Italian study that linked it to cancer in rats. He said the history of aspartame's licensing put "regulators and politicians to shame", with the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary and former head of Searle, the company that discovered the sweetener, "calling in his markers" to get it approved.

Responding for the government, the public health minister, Caroline Flint, said a thorough independent review of safety data had been conducted as recently as 2001 and the Food Standards Agency advice remained the same: aspartame is safe for use in food. She said the government took food safety very seriously.

The European Food Safety Authority would be reviewing the Italian study as soon as it had full data on it, but an initial review by the UK's expert committee on toxicity had not been convinced by its authors' interpretation of their data. "I am advised that aspartame does not cause cancer," she said, adding that artificial sweeteners also help to control obesity.
Aspartame is now consumed on average every day by one in 15 people worldwide, most of whom are children, according to the MP. It is used to sweeten no fewer than 6,000 products, from crisps, confectionery, chewing gums, diet and sports drinks to vitamin pills and medicines, including those for children. Yet the science that supported its approval was "biased, inconclusive and incompetent".

Mr Williams said he was using the immunity he was afforded under parliamentary privilege to initiate a debate about aspartame's safety which had been largely repressed since the early 1980s, with the help of the sweetener industry's lawyers. Independent research published last month by the European Ramazzini Foundation showed moderate regular consumption of aspartame led to a repeated incidence of malignant tumours in rats and "should have set alarm bells ringing in health departments around the world", he said. "The World Health Organisation recognises such findings in rats as being highly predictive of a carcinogenic risk for humans. The contrast between the quality of the science in the Ramazzini study and the industry studies could not be more clear and more damaging to the industry."

Mr Williams, the MP for Brecon and Radnorshire and a Cambridge science graduate, said he had been looking into the safety of aspartame for more than a year. At first he had been unconvinced by the "internet conspiracy theories" but he said what he had found had "truly horrified" him. Sound science and proper regulatory and political independence had been notable by their absence from the approval of aspartame, he said. In addition to Mr Rumsfeld being instrumental in securing aspartame's approval, with the support of the then newly elected president Ronald Reagan, there had been numerous examples of decision makers who were worried about aspartame's safety being discredited or being removed from their positions. Industry sympathisers had been appointed to replace them and were in turn recompensed with lucrative jobs working for the sweetener industry. The European Food Safety Authority said last night that it planned to review the safety of aspartame as "a matter of high priority" in the light of the Ramazzini Foundation study. The foundation's director, Dr Morando Soffritti, said he expected to send the authority a 1,000-page dossier by the end of the month.
The industry's Aspartame Information Service said Mr Williams' material brought no new information to the public. "The minister's response was accurate and on point," a statement said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1667771,00.html

Safety of artificial sweetener called into question by MP

Examples cited in the Commons of the 6,000 products with aspartame

Felicity Lawrence, consumer affairs correspondent
Thursday December 15, 2005
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk

In 1977 Donald Rumsfeld, now George Bush's defence secretary but then chief executive of the pharmaceutical company GD Searle, publicly stated that he would "call in his markers" to win a licence for aspartame, the sweetener that had been discovered by chance in Searle's laboratories, according to Roger Williams in the Commons yesterday. Mr Williams, MP for Brecon and Radnorshire, said in an adjournment debate that there was much controversy about aspartame's safety at the time but "Rumsfeld appears to have honoured his pledge". In fact, "the history of the approval of aspartame puts public health regulators and politicians to shame".

The sweetener is now used in 6,000 products, from crisps such as Walkers prawn cocktail, to soft drinks including Diet Coke and Robinson's fruit squash, chewing gums such as Orbit, and vitamins pills and medicines. Yet the science on which it was given approval was "biased, inconclusive, and incompetent". "There is compelling and reliable evidence for this carcinogenic substance to be banned from the UK food and drinks market." On the day of his inauguration as president in 1981, with Mr Rumsfeld on his transition team, Ronald Reagan personally wrote an executive order suspending the head of the US Food and Drug Administration's powers on aspartame, Mr Williams further claimed. One month later Mr Reagan appointed a new head of the regulatory authority, Arthur Hayes, who granted a licence for the sweetener.

"The history of aspartame's approval is littered with examples showing that if key decision makers found against aspartame's safety, they were discredited or replaced by industry sympathisers, who were recompensed with lucrative jobs."

The MP said he was using his parliamentary privilege to highlight "the strong scientific evidence" that the components of aspartame and their metabolites can cause very serious toxic effects on humans, and that long-term aspartame use can cause cancer.

Searle had originally submitted a host of studies to the FDA in 1970s in the hope of getting aspartame approved. But when flaws were revealed in the science behind another Searle product, Flagyl, the FDA set up a taskforce to investigate 15 of the key studies submitted by Searle on aspartame. Dr Jerome Bressler was commissioned by the FDA to investigate three of these studies. He had found 52 major discrepancies in Searle's clinical conduct of the studies, Mr Williams told the Commons. Tumours contracted by rats were removed before dissection but not reported; one record shows an animal in the experiment was alive, then dead, then alive again, then dead again. MPs were told that because it lacked funds, the FDA submitted 12 other studies to be analysed by a research body that was under contract to Searle at the time. It declared all 12 studies authentic. Doubts about aspartame among FDA scientists were overruled by the FDA's administration and it was given approval. Many other countries soon followed suit and approved aspartame on the basis of the same flawed studies, Mr Williams said. In 1996 a review of aspartame research found that every single industry-funded study found aspartame safe. But 92% of independent studies identified one or more problems with its safety.

Mr Williams outlined to MPs the evidence that the breakdown products of aspartame include suspected carcinogens and toxic molecules that damage nerve cells. But the final nail in the coffin for the sweetener, he said, was a new, "monumental" peer-reviewed study, that should have "set alarm bells ringing in health departments around the world".

This vast study, conducted by the Italian-based European Ramazzini Foundation, demonstrated that aspartame caused a significant increase in lymphomas and leukaemias, malignant tumours of the kidneys in female rats and malignant tumours of peripheral and cranial nerves in male rats. These tumours occurred at doses that were well below the acceptable daily intake recommended by the regulatory authorities in the EU and US.

The public health minister, Caroline Flint, responding for the government, said it took the issue very seriously and would look at any new evidence. But she added that the use of food additives was very strictly controlled at EU level. The safety of aspartame had been very extensively reviewed many times and the current advice remained that it does not cause cancer and is safe.
Artificial sweeteners help in the control of obesity, she said. Acceptable daily intakes were set at a very conservative level. Moreover, the UK's expert committee on toxicity had reviewed the initial data from the Ramazzini Foundation and had not been convinced by its interpretations, but the European Food Safety Authority would conduct a review when it had the full data.

The trade associations for confectionery, snack, soft drink and pill manufacturers and the sweetener industry's Aspartame Information Service said aspartame had been used safely for many years and evidence for its safety had been reviewed and approved many times by regulators around the world, including by the WHO, the FDA, the UN expert committee on food additives and the EU scientific committee for food. They pointed out that the European Food Safety Authority has said that "based on current evidence, it does not recommend that consumers who wish to choose foods containing aspartame make any changes to their dietary habits".

The compounds
Aspartame breaks down into three components - a methyl ester and two amino acids: phenylalanine and aspartic acid, according to Roger Williams during the parliamentary debate. The sweetener industry repeatedly pointed out that these compounds occur naturally in food and drink, yet that statement hid the complex science that makes each one harmful to humans when found in aspartame, he added. In food, phenylalanine and aspartic acid are bound to other amino acids in long, complex chains of proteins so that they are not absorbed in a way that could cause damage. But in aspartame they are not, and enzymes in the gut can easily split them apart. Once phenylalanine is released in its free form, it is metabolised into diketopiperazine, a suspected carcinogen. Aspartic acid in its free form becomes an excitotoxin, a toxic molecule that stimulates nerve cells to the point of damage or death.

The third component of aspartame, methyl ester, was the most harmful, Mr Williams said. It is metabolised by the body into methanol, a well-known poison. In the US, the environmental protection agency defines safe consumption of methanol as no more than 7.8 mg a day. Anyone drinking three cans of a drink sweetened with aspartame a day was consuming about 56 mg of methanol, the MP said.

The public health minister, Caroline Flint, responded by saying that studies had shown methanol levels were not increased by the ingestion of aspartame.