Aspartame - FDA Spins News on Second Cancer Study
Morando Soffritti, an Italian researcher with the Ramazzini Foundation in Bologna is known for his publication of a study that found aspartame, the artificial sweetener consisting of two amino acids and a methanol binding agent, caused multiple cancers in rats. Soffritti was in New York on Monday, 23 April, to accept a prestigious academic award and to talk about a second study his institute is conducting with lower doses of aspartame. Although results have not yet been published, the study appears set to confirm the findings of the first study and the researchers are finding negative health effects even at very low dosages of aspartame, comparable to the intakes of people who are regularly using diet drinks.
See New Study by Ramazzini Institute Confirms Aspartame Carcinogenic
Betty Martini with Dr. Morando Soffritti
In a move designed to head off yet more negative publicity for the toxic sweetener, the FDA issued a press release on Friday - just days before Soffritti's talk at the Mount Sinai Medical School - re-stating the FDA's earlier contention that there is "No evidence the sweetener causes cancer".
"The Food and Drug Administration says Italian researchers reached the wrong conclusion when they said the sugar substitute aspartame causes cancer. The director of the F-D-A's Office of Food Additive Safety, Laura Tarantino, says a review of the data from the 2005 study found "no evidence" that the low-calorie sweetener is a carcinogen. A similar review by the F-D-A's European counterpart reached the same conclusion."
In this way, the press was induced to carry the FDA's denial in numerous variations and Soffritti's talk last Monday was no longer considered "newsworthy", although there IS a new study in progress and it certainly adds to emerging knowledge about the effects of the artificial sweetener. It is of interest to see PR at work here and one should should note how well the technologies of public communication are being used by Big Pharma and its supposed "regulator", the FDA. The two, it seems, will soon be joined in an incestuous 'marriage', if a recent bill proposed by Senator Kennedy finds the approval of US lawmakers.
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Aspartame - FDA spins news on second cancer study
(adapted from a recent communication of Betty Martini)
On Monday, Morando Soffritti, M..D., Scientific Director of the European Foundation for Oncology and Environment Sciences "B. Ramazzini" in Bologna, Italy received the prestigious Irving J. Selikoff Award and gave a lecture on a new study on aspartame with small doses. After his first study in 2005 that made world news proving aspartame to be a multipotential carcinogen, confirming FDA's original records, the European Ramazzini Foundation began a second long term experiment, administering aspartame at low doses in food to rats beginning during fetal life. Dr. Soffritti's new study suggests a danger to unborn babies and especially to children, including the risk of breast cancer as the child ages.
In original studies by Searle aspartame also triggered mammary tumors big time. He says aspartame causes leukemia, lymphoma and pelvis and kidney tumors. In his first study only the rats fed aspartame developed malignant brain tumors. Aspartame breaks down to diketopiperazine, a brain tumor agent that triggered brain tumors in original studies. In the Bressler Report or FDA audit, it explains how Searle, the original manufacturer were excising the brain tumors, putting the rats back in the study, and then resurrecting them on paper when they died. The report is on dorway.com In fact, Dr. H. J. Roberts, Dr. Russell Blaylock and myself spoke to Jerome Bressler and he said it was so bad when the FDA retyped his report they removed the most damning 20%. The FDA to this day refuses to release it, even to a congressman.
Dr. Soffritti mentioned in his lecture that aspartame is in 500 drugs, and I might add even in children's prescription drugs like Pediatric Augmentin, pediatric vitamins and over-the-counter pediatric drugs. Also important was the caution that pregnant moms that consumed aspartame appeared to pass on the cancer risk to fetuses, with the vulnerability of fetuses being such that exposure in womb seemed to add to cancer risk later in life. That parallels the human experience.
In 1985, Dr. Louis Elsas, Professor of Genetics, then at Emory University, told Congress that aspartame is a neurotoxin and teratogen and causes birth defects and mental retardation. Would you ever consider a child using this deadly, deadly poison. Would you give a child arsenic? Don't allow a child to have aspartame. In fact, neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D., in a lecture said the reactions are not allergic but toxic like those to arsenic and cyanide. His new lecture really explains how serious the original Ramazzini Study is and how precise. It's called The Truth About Aspartame and you can get a copy at www.atavistik.com Dr. Blaylock's books like Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills are at www.russellblaylockmd.com
The FDA just committed such a despicable act. Knowing the new Ramazzini would make world news on Monday, they sent out a release on Friday on the 2005 Ramazzini study saying they didn't accept it. Of course, they didn't say why because there was no reason. You should see what the aspartame industry with their influence tried to rebut it with and got caught. First they tried to use a 16 page diet and health study questionnaire for seniors over ten years ago. It asked if you smoke, do you exercise, do you eat crackers, cookies sausage, collards, what was your highest grade in school, have you had a hysterectomy, did you eat pancakes, oatmeal or strawberries in the past year; carrots cheeseburgers, cornbread or brownies. Aspartame is named in one of 56 questions: "Over the last 12 months when you drank coffee or tea, what kind of sweetener did you regularly add?" They advertised that as a new Federal Study on 567,000 Americans by the NIH, NCI and AARP. What they didn't ask on the questionnaire was whether the respondents had used aspartame products.
Then the European Food Safety Authority with links to Ajinomoto came out with this "but the rats had respiratory disease which caused the cancers". They should have been ashamed of themselves. Any physician or researcher knows respiratory disease is often part of the dying process and it doesn't cause cancer. After reporting them to the Universal Court of Justice one of the members confessed they were pressured by industry to hijack science. So the FDA had no excuses left to use.
The whole story about aspartame and cancer is in the public record. It's in the medical text on the global plague - Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, www.sunsentpress.com by H. J. Roberts, M.D. One man and an attorney who worked in the Justice Department with aspartame brain tumors are interviewed in "Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, www.amazon.com, an aspartame documentary.
Can it get any worse? Aspartame can cause you to drop dead: many reports come in about children athletes who drop dead for no apparent reason.
Meanwhile, Sainsbury's has removed aspartame from it soft drinks...
See also:
Letter to FDA: Why are you lying about aspartame?
Betty Martini has written an open letter to the Laura Tarantino of the FDA regarding the press release that negates cancer-causing effects of aspartame, an artificial sweetener also known as nutra sweet, equal, canderal and spoonful. The FDA's release, placed just before news of a second italian study that seems to confirm aspartame toxicity was to be published in New York, reads...
Comments
April 28, 2007 2:43 AM | Posted by: tal
Unfortunately, while Sainsbury's has removed artificial flavors, colors and aspartame from their store-brand soda, they have merely substituted splenda/sucralose for the aspartame. I still would not drink it myself or give it to children. This is NOT progress, simply the appearance of progress.. Inexplicably, all the news releases tout the removal of one toxic substance without mentioning the addition of another. I can't imagine why this site retains that headline.
April 28, 2007 5:25 AM | Posted by: kathryn riera
There is no doubt in my mind that aspartame causes cancers+other diseases. My brother-in-law is a huge aspartame user +has MS, MY brother-in-law is addicted to aspartame.
I have read many articles that say aspartame causes many nerological diseases,+he can't give up the aspartame.
April 29, 2007 1:36 AM | Posted by: Jack D
This is all about big business. They make money from Aspartame and the gov't taxes that money. After all, corporations and gov't are merely quid-pro-quo whorehouses sold to the highest bidder. When the gov't needs illegal wire-taps, Verizon and Sprint allow them secret rooms to listen in on calls. When Haliburton (and KBR) need more revenue, the gov't hands out no-bid contracts. When the gov't dislikes literature, Amazon and Wikipedia ban the book "America Deceived". We The People had our gov't (and our health) sold out from beneath us.
Final link (before Google Books caves to pressure and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)
April 30, 2007 5:30 AM | Posted by: Steve Savage
We've ALL been deceived. There's nothing wrong with sugar. In fact sucrose is perfectly mundane and has been in the food supply for quite some time.
The real problem has always been the quiet introduction of massive amounts of corn syrup products into our food (fructose mostly, glucose too).
Sucralose, aspartame, and saccharin are totally un-necessary. The consumer just needs to avoid all the heavily processed foods the industry pushes on us and advertises to us every day.
You can talk about conspiracies all day, but in the end, the watchful consumer has all the power.
April 30, 2007 10:17 AM | Posted by: Carol L.
Several of us have read up on this for awhile. I am convinced that aspertame is a neurotoxin, as they term it. When I tell people, some just ignore my comments. Others already are aware.
May 1, 2007 1:02 AM | Posted by: Pamela Roosma
When I was drinking this aspartame it was giving me floaters in my eyes and as soon as I was able to quit the floaters in my eyes disappeared. But I was drinking at least a 2 liter a day and I was needing to drink it.
August 28, 2007 7:18 PM | Posted by: Lady C. A. Davies
Recently my sister was sent for an MRI scan to see what damage she may have received as a result of a fall. There was no damage from the fall.
What they found was damage to the putamen typically consistent with the ingestion of methanol.
At 66 years of age the only source of methanol that she has had is a lemonade drink that contains just under 600mg of ASPARTAME per liter of fluid, thus giving her 60mg/L of pure methanol. Also, she has been taking pain tablets for her arthritis, and osteoporsis medication, and both contained aspartame.
The experts say that the minimum 'safe' dose of this poisonous alcohol is 4mg - 10mg.
Here is a case of medically proven methanol damage to the brain that can be attributed only to one source: Aspartame. there is no other explanation!
My sister does not drink alcohol! She does not indulge in drinking 'binges'! The strongest it ever gets is lemonade. Now she sticks to water and fruit juices. but the damage is already done.
August 7, 2008 5:53 AM | Posted by: Pharmacy
Aspartame is the name for an artificial, non-saccharide sweetener, aspartyl-phenylalanine-1-methyl ester; i.e., a methyl ester of the dipeptide of the amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine.
This sweetener is marketed under a number of trademark names, including Tropicana Slim, Equal, NutraSweet, and Canderel, and is an ingredient of approximately 6,000 consumer foods and beverages sold worldwide. It is commonly used in diet soft drinks, and is often provided as a table condiment. It is also used in some brands of chewable vitamin supplements and common in many sugar-free chewing gums. However, aspartame is not always suitable for baking because it often breaks down when heated and loses much of its sweetness. In the European Union, it is also known under the E number. Aspartame is also one of the sugar substitutes used by people with diabetes.