NY Times article on Aspartame

[NKYKev]

I found this article very disturbing. It actually doesn't mention several other problems, but it at least deals with the history of how it got approved and the fact that studies not paid for by the industry have been showing problems for years. For those who do not have a NY Times account, here is the full article.

February 12, 2006
The Lowdown on Sweet?
By MELANIE WARNER

WHEN Dr. Morando Soffritti, a cancer researcher in Bologna, Italy, saw the results of his team's seven-year study on aspartame, he knew he was about to be injected into a bitter controversy over this sweetener, one of the most contentiously debated substances ever added to foods and beverages.

Aspartame is sold under the brand names Nutra-Sweet and Equal and is found in such popular products as Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Snapple and Sugar Free Kool-Aid. Hundreds of millions of people consume it worldwide. And Dr. Soffritti's study concluded that aspartame may cause the dreaded "c" word: cancer.

The research found that the sweetener was associated with unusually high rates of lymphomas, leukemias and other cancers in rats that had been given doses of it starting at what would be equivalent to four to five 20-ounce bottles of diet soda a day for a 150-pound person. The study, which involved 1,900 laboratory rats and cost $1 million, was conducted at the European Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences, a nonprofit organization that studies cancer-causing substances; Dr. Soffritti is its scientific director.

The findings, first released last July, prompted a flurry of criticism from the Calorie Control Council, a trade group for makers of artificial sweeteners that has spent the last 25 years trying to quell fears about aspartame. It said Dr. Soffritti's study flew in the face of four earlier cancer studies that aspartame's creator, G. D. Searle & Company, had underwritten and used to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to approve it for human consumption. "Aspartame has been safely consumed for more than a quarter of a century and is one of the most thoroughly studied food additives," read one news release from the council.

At the same time, Dr. Soffritti's findings have energized a vociferous group of researchers, health advocates and others who say they are convinced that aspartame is a toxin associated with a variety of health troubles, including headaches, dizziness, blindness and seizures.

DR. SOFFRITTI, who oversees 180 scientists and researchers in 30 countries who collaborate on toxin research, says that since last July, he has been contacted by some of these critics, including a member of Parliament in Britain and a number of conspiracy theorists, some of whom say they have suffered from "aspartame poisoning" and filled Web pages with cloak-and-dagger speculation about why the F.D.A. approved aspartame for sale a quarter-century ago.

No regulatory agency has yet acted on Dr. Soffritti's findings, although Roger Williams, a member of Parliament, called for a ban on aspartame in Britain last December. Last month, the European Food Safety Authority, an advisory body for the European Commission, began to review 900 pages of data from Dr. Soffritti; the goal is to finish by May. A commission spokesman, Philip Tod, said it was too early to know what the next steps would be if the scientists reviewing the data concurred with Dr. Soffritti's findings.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration says it has also taken note of the study, which is available online (http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2005/8711/abstract.html) and is scheduled to be published next month in a medical journal financed by the National Institutes of Health. F.D.A. officials say that they, too, intend to conduct a thorough review.

But both the F.D.A. and the European Commission have cautioned that there is no need for people to avoid aspartame. "We don't see any concerns at this stage," said George H. Pauli, associate director for science policy in the F.D.A.'s Office of Food Additive Safety. "We've gone through a humongous amount of data on aspartame over the years."

Putting restrictions on aspartame would come at a significant cost. Food companies and consumers around the world bought about $570 million worth of it last year. New regulatory action on aspartame would also jeopardize the billions of dollars worth of products sold with it. Already, in the United States, many companies are opting to use sucralose, or Splenda, in their new low-calorie products, in part because it is less controversial.

Lance Collins, chief executive of Fuze Beverage in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., said that safety concerns about aspartame were a "major contributing factor" in his decision to use sucralose in his tea and juice drinks. Sucralose, however, is made by under a patent by just one company, Tate & Lyle of London, and is in desperately short supply.

Dr. Soffritti, who has spent 28 years doing research on potential carcinogens, said he was trying to steer clear of the growing political maelstrom. But he added that he was concerned about the large numbers of people who use aspartame, particularly children and pregnant women. "If something is a carcinogen in animals," he said, "then it should not be added to food, especially if there are so many people that are going to be consuming it."

Lyn Nabors, executive vice president of the Calorie Control Council, said Dr. Soffritti's study was not valid because the rats used in it had been allowed to live longer than the two-year standard established by the United States government's National Toxicology Program. "It's difficult to determine if the cancers you find are due to something else," Ms. Nabors said. "Just as in humans, the rat's body slows down later in life, and the aging process causes all kinds of things."

But John R. Bucher, deputy director of environmental toxicology at the National Toxicology Program, the government's agency for research on toxic chemicals, called the design of the Ramazzini study "impressive" and "thorough," and said that he did not think the fact that rats were allowed to live until their natural deaths had skewed the results.

Dr. Jose Russo, director of the breast cancer and environmental research center at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, says that lifetime studies are "ideal" but that they are not done often, partly because they are more expensive than limited-time tests. Dr. Russo, however, criticized the Ramazzini study for not allowing outside pathologists to analyze all of the tissue samples where cancerous tumors were found. "People need to see every tumor," he said.

Dr. Bucher of the National Toxicology Program said pathologists at the program, with which Ramazzini collaborates, looked at 70 tumor slides. But with the study producing over 9,000 tumor-containing slides, James Swenberg, professor of environmental science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says that this falls short of standard practice.

While Dr. Soffritti's methods have drawn some criticism, the Ramazzini cancer lab, which is financed by private bank foundations, governments and 17,000 individual members, has earned considerable credibility since it was founded in 1971 for its pioneering research on chemicals. It was the first research body to do studies showing that vinyl chloride and the gasoline additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or M.T.B.E., are carcinogenic, research that eventually encouraged the United States to strictly regulate vinyl chloride and that led 21 states to ban M.T.B.E.

Dr. Soffritti said he was inspired to look at aspartame because of what he calls "inadequacies" in the cancer studies done by Searle in the 1970's. He said that those studies did not involve large-enough numbers of rats and did not allow them to live long enough to develop cancer.

[NKYKev]

The Ramazzini study was conducted with 1,900 rats, as opposed to the 280 to 688 rodents used in Searle's studies, and the rats lived for up to three years instead of being sacrificed after two, which is the human equivalent of age 53. "Cancer is a disease of the third part of life," Dr. Soffritti said. "You have 75 percent of cancer diagnoses for people who are 55 years old or older. So if you truncate the experiments at 110 weeks and the rats are supposed to survive until 150 to 160 weeks, it means you avoid the development of cancer at the time when cancer would be starting to arise."

Others have also challenged Searle's studies. Documents from the F.D.A. and records from the Federal Register indicate that, in the years before the F.D.A. approved aspartame, the agency had serious concerns about the accuracy and credibility of Searle's aspartame studies. From 1977 to 1985 ? during much of the approval process ? Searle was headed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is now the secretary of defense; Searle was acquired by Monsanto in 1985. Monsanto later spun Searle's assets out into two companies: Merisant, which owns the brands Equal and Canderel, and NutraSweet, which is owned by J. W. Childs Equity Partners, an investment firm in Boston.

A 1976 report from an F.D.A. task force, for example, found that Searle's studies on aspartame and several of the company's pharmaceutical drugs were "poorly conceived, carelessly executed, or inaccurately analyzed or reported." It cited what it called a lack of training by the scientists analyzing tissue samples, a "substantial" loss of information because of tissue decomposition and inadequate monitoring of feeding doses.

In response to the report, the F.D.A. asked the Justice Department to open a grand jury investigation into whether two of Searle's aspartame studies had been falsified or were incomplete. In a 33-page letter in 1977, Richard A. Merrill, the F.D.A.'s chief counsel at the time, recommended to Samuel K. Skinner, then the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, that a grand jury investigate the company, which was based in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, for "concealing material facts and making false statements in reports of animal studies conducted to establish the safety of the drug Aldactone and the food additive aspartame."

A grand jury was never convened, however. Shortly after the letter was sent, Mr. Skinner left the Justice Department to join Sidley & Austin, a law firm that represented Searle. After 12 years at that firm, now Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood, Mr. Skinner was appointed to be President George H. W. Bush's transportation secretary; later he became his chief of staff. In 1978, a year and half after Mr. Skinner left the United States attorney's office in Chicago, his deputy, William F. Conlon, also left to work at Sidley & Austin.

Mr. Skinner, now a lawyer at Greenberg Traurig LLP, said that as soon as he began looking for a new job and interviewing with Sidley & Austin, he recused himself from the Searle investigation. Mr. Conlon, who is still at Sidley & Austin, did not return phone calls.

Over the next few years, Searle's petition for aspartame approval led to much disagreement within the F.D.A. The commissioner at the time, Alexander M. Schmidt, convened a three-member public board of inquiry, which concluded that one of Searle's studies on rats showed an increase in brain tumors from aspartame. The board members ? all of them scientists at universities ? voted to withhold approval of aspartame until more studies were done.

But yet another F.D.A. review, this one of Searle's tumor tissue slides ? paid for by Searle and conducted by an academic group that is now defunct ? concluded that Searle's studies had demonstrated that aspartame was safe. In 1981, a new F.D.A. commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, concurred with this assessment and granted approval to aspartame shortly after President Ronald Reagan appointed him to run the agency.

And in a move that fueled the conspiracy theories, Mr. Hayes left the F.D.A. a little more than a year after approving aspartame and took a job as a consultant to Burson-Marsteller, which at the time was Searle's public relations agency. Mr. Hayes did not return calls seeking comment.

Ms. Nabors of the Calorie Control Council said that suggestions or innuendoes that Searle was trying to influence government officials with lucrative job offers were baseless. Artificial sweeteners are unfairly targeted for suspicion, she said, citing the government's decision to ban the sweetener cyclamate in 1969 after studies showed that it caused cancer in animals. "Cyclamate was banned, saccharin was required to have a warning label for a while, and there's all these conspiracy theories on aspartame," she said.

She added that there were more than 100 published scientific studies showing no adverse effects from aspartame, and said that in 2002, the European Commission reviewed many of these studies and reaffirmed the sweetener's safety. The bulk of the studies investigated neurological effects; none were animal cancer studies, which are lengthy and expensive.

In any case, critics say that most of these studies were financed either directly or indirectly by manufacturers of aspartame, and that the results of aspartame studies tend to depend on who paid for them. In an analysis of 166 articles published in medical journals from 1980 to 1985, Dr. Ralph G. Walton, a professor of psychiatry at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine found that all 74 studies that were financed by the industry attested to sweetener's safety.

Of the 92 independently funded articles, 84 identified adverse health effects. "Whenever you have studies that were not funded by the industry, some sort of problem is identified," said Dr. Walton, adding that he has not looked at studies performed since 1985. "It's far too much for it to be a coincidence."

Dr. Walton, who, like some other psychiatrists, has studied aspartame from a neurological perspective, said he had also seen problems from the sweetener firsthand. At Safe Harbor Behavioral Health, a mental health facility in Erie, Pa., where he is clinical director, Dr. Walton said he had observed that for many people with mood disorders, such as depression or bipolar disorder, aspartame exacerbates the condition. "For people with panic disorders, for instance, we've seen that when we eliminate aspartame, it's much easier to control their illness," he said. "The number of panic attacks goes down."

Dr. Walton and others say that this is probably attributable to aspartame's phenyalanine component. (Aspartame is made up of two amino acids, phenyalanine and aspartic acid.) He said that an excess of phenyalanine could upset the body's balance of neurotransmitters, causing a range of neurological symptoms.

Defenders of aspartame often point out that phenyalanine is naturally present in many protein-intensive foods. But Dr. William M. Pardridge, a professor of endocrinology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, says that when it comes from food, phenyalanine is absorbed into the brain more slowly.

"If your blood phenyalanine level was increased five times, in my view there would be a safety concern," Dr. Pardridge said. "The question is whether aspartame use could ever increase levels that much, and the answer is yes. We've known that for 20 years."

Dr. Soffritti said he had not studied the effects of phenyalanine. He theorized that the tumors in his study were related to the methanol, or wood alcohol, that is produced as the body metabolizes aspartame. When the body breaks down methanol, the result is formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. "I know that when I treat animals with methanol, you end up with lymphomas and leukemias," he said.

BUT Dr. Kenneth E. McMartin, a methanol expert and professor of pharmacology, toxicology and neuroscience at the Louisiana State University Medical Center, said he believed that it was unlikely that someone could consume enough aspartame to let harmful levels of formaldehyde build up in the body.

Dr. Soffritti said he thought that more research and open debate were needed on whether aspartame was a carcinogen. "It is very important to have scientists who are independent and not funded by industry looking at this," he said.

Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition advocacy group, said he did not think that Dr. Soffritti's study could be considered definitive, but that it should prompt an "urgent re-examination.

"For a chemical that is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, it should be absolutely safe," Mr. Jacobson said. "There shouldn't be a cloud of doubt."

Dr. Soffritti's journal article on his findings is at nytimes.com/business.

[tony286]

very scary shit

[NKYKev]

Originally Posted by tony404

very scary shit

Yeah, it is amazing that a product that breaks down into formaldehyde and other toxins can get FDA approval without any independent studies to show the long term effects of such chemicals.

[xclusive]

Not what I wanted to read as i'm having my morning diet coke

[Manowar]

Originally Posted by xclusive

Not what I wanted to read as i'm having my morning diet coke

[KRL]

Hey this is the same goverment that allows millions of people to smoke cigarettes which we all know are pure poison and cancer causing.

What do expect them to pull Diet Cokes when they let the Marlboro Man still sell billions of cigs.

[Doctor Dre]

People have been saying for a long time. I do not eat much sweet so I guess I'm safe ;)

[bopha]

Which one is the Aspertame? Yellow packet is Splenda (made from sugar). Blue is Equal, which I didn't think was Aspertame. Maybe the Pink one?

I believe I recall it being in something years ago called Fas-sweet or Tab cola.

[sfera]

all that crap is bad and will give u brain tumors

[LauraLee]

I have been avoiding that shit for sometime now. If you are going to use an artificial sweetner Splenda is the way to go.

[G-Rotica]

Well hell. If I can't have my Diet Mt. Dew, what can I have?

[IWantU_Jeff]

ANy Fresca drinkers also? all kinds of it in there.. I drink (err maybe drank now) it all the time mmm fruity sparkling grapefruit beverage.....

[NaughtyAllie]

I drink six to eight cans of Diet Coke a day (maybe more).

[northboy]

I never use any products with aspratame. A lot of brands of gum use it. I laugh at everyone drinking diet coke thinking they are staying healthy. But there's been mention of aspartame being linked to cancer for years, I don't know why people don't take it more seriously.

[DaddyHalbucks]

Originally Posted by bopha

Which one is the Aspertame? Yellow packet is Splenda (made from sugar). Blue is Equal, which I didn't think was Aspertame. Maybe the Pink one?

I believe I recall it being in something years ago called Fas-sweet or Tab cola.

Equal= Aspartame

Sucralose/ Splenda is chemically similar to sugar, but it is not sugar. It has 3 chlorine atoms where you should have 3 hydrogen-oxygen groups. Chlorine is a dangerous and highly reactive atom. Sucralose is Frankensugar, in my opinion.

Use any sugar substitutes at your own risk!!

[Kassidy]

Aspartame is in almost every 'diet' product on the market. It's very scarey shit. But who is really surprised when all these things are is chemical toxin. And Splenda isn't 'good for you' either - it is sugar that has been bleached.

Unless any food you eat comes in it's natural form, chances are it's not good for you. Cut out the chemicals and get your sweet cravings from natural sources like fruit. If you have to have sweet coffee or tea you're better off using honey or dark brown sugar, both having very little processing.

[Kassidy]

Here's an article on Splenda aka sucralose:
http://www.mercola.com/2000/dec/3/su...e_dangers.htm#

chemicals as food = bad shit

[TheJimmy]

Originally Posted by DaddyHalbucks

Equal= Aspartame

Sucralose/ Splenda is chemically similar to sugar, but it is not sugar. It has 3 chlorine atoms where you should have 3 hydrogen-oxygen groups. Chlorine is a dangerous and highly reactive atom. Sucralose is Frankensugar, in my opinion.

Use any sugar substitutes at your own risk!!

Thanks for beating me to that punch...seriously, splenda is some bad shit, that 'wrapper' of 'it's made from sugar' shit makes me sick

[jeffrey]

Originally Posted by socalkev

Yeah, it is amazing that a product that breaks down into formaldehyde and other toxins can get FDA approval without any independent studies to show the long term effects of such chemicals.

I always find these Aspertame debates entertaining.


Here is a quick breakdown of the 3 compontents of aspertame that are toxic.
Phenylalanine, Methanol, and Formaldehyde.
Sure they are toxic, but aspertame isnt the only source of these, infact its damn hard to not consume these.



"Methanol is a common component of the diet, and
is found in many fruits, vegetables, and wines.
Furthermore, the amount of methanol from foods far
exceeds any contribution from aspartame (Lund
1981). Aspartame-sweetened soft drinks, for
example, provide 60 mg of methanol per liter as
compared to fruit juices which contain 140 mg of
methanol per liter."


"Formaldehyde is naturally produced in very small amounts in our bodies as a part of our normal, everyday metabolism and causes us no harm. It can also be found in the air that we breathe at home and at work, in the food we eat, and in some products that we put on our skin."


Phenylalanine is found naturally in foods such as eggs, milk, bananas, and meat.

[Phoenix]

Originally Posted by NaughtyAllie

I drink six to eight cans of Diet Coke a day (maybe more).

error error error

[Pleasurepays]

Originally Posted by socalkev

Yeah, it is amazing that a product that breaks down into formaldehyde and other toxins can get FDA approval without any independent studies to show the long term effects of such chemicals.

aspertame is simply two amino acids combined. nothing more.

there is no other food product on the planet that has been more thoroughly studied and that is also a fact.

[marzzo]

Originally Posted by Pleasurepays

aspertame is simply two amino acids combined. nothing more.

there is no other food product on the planet that has been more thoroughly studied and that is also a fact.

Wrong. It is NOT a food product, it is a CHEMICAL - 10% of which is Methly Alcohol - a poison that our body breaks down into formaldehyde. And the 'more thorougly studied' comment is bullshit. You're spouting the same crap that the company (Searle) has been claiming and you're only making things worse by quoting your 'facts'.

Actually, I just watch the documentary 'Sweet Misery' last night and it's pretty fucking scary:

http://www.soundandfury.tv/pages/trailer.html

The manipulation of the FDA and CDC and the falsification of the studies and experiments by the chemical company is criminal.

[Pleasurepays]

Originally Posted by marzzo

Wrong. It is NOT a food product, it is a CHEMICAL - 10% of which is Methly Alcohol - a poison that our body breaks down into formaldehyde. And the 'more thorougly studied' comment is bullshit. You're spouting the same crap that the company (Searle) has been claiming and you're only making things worse by quoting your 'facts'.

Actually, I just watch the documentary 'Sweet Misery' last night and it's pretty fucking scary:

http://www.soundandfury.tv/pages/trailer.html

The manipulation of the FDA and CDC and the falsification of the studies and experiments by the chemical company is criminal.

i can produce h20 in a lab and call it a chemical. i can produce salt in a lab and call it a chemical. it does not make h2o any more dangerous. i dont know anything about Searle and don't care. i have read enough about aspertame to understand the controversy and to know that its been well studied.

[marzzo]

Originally Posted by Pleasurepays

i can produce h20 in a lab and call it a chemical. i can produce salt in a lab and call it a chemical. it does not make h2o any more dangerous. i dont know anything about Searle and don't care. i have read enough about aspertame to understand the controversy and to know that its been well studied.

Well, you're obviously haven't done enough research educate yourself about how well it's been studied. Good luck living in your bubble ;)

You simply have no clue

[NKYKev]

Originally Posted by jeffrey

I always find these Aspertame debates entertaining.


Here is a quick breakdown of the 3 compontents of aspertame that are toxic.
Phenylalanine, Methanol, and Formaldehyde.
Sure they are toxic, but aspertame isnt the only source of these, infact its damn hard to not consume these.



"Methanol is a common component of the diet, and
is found in many fruits, vegetables, and wines.
Furthermore, the amount of methanol from foods far
exceeds any contribution from aspartame (Lund
1981). Aspartame-sweetened soft drinks, for
example, provide 60 mg of methanol per liter as
compared to fruit juices which contain 140 mg of
methanol per liter."


"Formaldehyde is naturally produced in very small amounts in our bodies as a part of our normal, everyday metabolism and causes us no harm. It can also be found in the air that we breathe at home and at work, in the food we eat, and in some products that we put on our skin."


Phenylalanine is found naturally in foods such as eggs, milk, bananas, and meat.

And yet you notice that not a SINGLE M.D. or Ph.D. is quoted in this article making this type of argument - and there is a simple answer why. If you knew anything about protein biochemistry, you would know that amino acids in nature exist in long chains - which we call proteins. Our bodies have metabolic pathways to digest and use these proteins. When Aspartame is metabolized, the pure amino acid is released - quite a different story. In fact, there is only one enzyme that can metabolize phenylalanine, and those that don't have it get sick and die if they eat or drink anything that releases this amino acid by itself - ever hear of pku? Thats why the warning exists on the can. You don't see this warning on milk, or meat - the phenylalanine becomes an excitotoxin when present by itself - as it is when aspartame is metabolized.

As for the formaldehyde argument - another red herring. When we eat or drink methanol, there are usually other compounds present - such as ethanol - that inhibit the oxidation of methanol into formaldehyde. No such compounds are present in diet soda, for example - unless, of course, you put ethyl alcohol into it. If you happen to be eating or drinking other things that might inhibit the process, great - but how often do people just drink a diet soda by itself?

If you actually read the study, you will note that the rats ingesting as little as 500 ppm of methanol had significant increases in tumor rate over the control group, and on page 20 of 35, there is a discussion of new research tying formaldehyde exposure to leukemia and other diseases. Are you seriously trying to argue that exposure to large quantities of formaldehyde is safe? There is one hell of a difference between, say, 1 ppm and 500 ppm; not to mention, what are the long term effects of exposure to formaldehyde?

Oh yeah - you know far more about this than the director of one of the most prestigious cancer institutes in the world.

[Big Red Machine]

Originally Posted by marzzo

The manipulation of the FDA and CDC and the falsification of the studies and experiments by the chemical company is criminal.

America is all about Big Business, $ talks it doesn't matter about the health of others

[Tipsy]

Originally Posted by marzzo

Well, you're obviously haven't done enough research educate yourself about how well it's been studied. Good luck living in your bubble ;)

You simply have no clue

..and yet the really funny thing is because you too have read some biased reports that you do not really understand you think you have more of a clue

[NKYKev]

Originally Posted by Pleasurepays

aspertame is simply two amino acids combined. nothing more.

there is no other food product on the planet that has been more thoroughly studied and that is also a fact.

As noted in the article, over a 5 year period, 84 of 92 independently funded studies showed problems with the usage of this chemical, while every single study funded by the industry found no problems. You can think whatever you want.

And by the way - there is a thing called metabolism - and aspartame breaks down into more than just 2 amino acids anyway; it also forms methanol, which is oxidized to formaldehyde and formic acid in the body.

[marzzo]

Originally Posted by Tipsy

..and yet the really funny thing is because you too have read some biased reports that you do not really understand you think you have more of a clue

ha, I've read more about this shit (on both sides) than you can possibly imagine, buddy. When your doctor drops a bomb on you and says "you have Multiple Sclerosis" I would like think that you would do as much reserach as you possibly could about anything related to the degeneration of your central nervous system, but that's just me.

[digifan]

Originally Posted by KRL

Hey this is the same goverment that allows millions of people to smoke cigarettes which we all know are pure poison and cancer causing.

What do expect them to pull Diet Cokes when they let the Marlboro Man still sell billions of cigs.

[EroticySteve]

As I read the article, I drank a diet Pepsi.

[gornyhuy]

Originally Posted by KRL

Hey this is the same goverment that allows millions of people to smoke cigarettes which we all know are pure poison and cancer causing.

What do expect them to pull Diet Cokes when they let the Marlboro Man still sell billions of cigs.

Because there is no big warning on the can that says DIET COKE WILL KILL YOU... seems pretty straightforward to me.

[NKYKev]

Originally Posted by Pleasurepays

i can produce h20 in a lab and call it a chemical. i can produce salt in a lab and call it a chemical. it does not make h2o any more dangerous. i dont know anything about Searle and don't care. i have read enough about aspertame to understand the controversy and to know that its been well studied.

Well, lets read the opinion of an actual medical doctor - the Director of the Emory University Division of Medical Genetics; note the part that states that L-phenylalanine "in excess is a known neurotoxin." Here is a link to the FDA web site for those who want to read more on the subject.

> EMORY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
> DEPARTMENT OF PEDIATRICS
> 2040 Ridgewood Drive, N.E. Atlanta, Georgia 30322
>
>Division of
>MEDICAL GENETICS (404) 727-5840
>
>Statement for the Labor and Human Resources Committee, U.S. Senate
>
> I have considerable concern for the increased dissemination and
>consumption of the sweetener, aspartame, (1-methyl N-L-a-aspartyl-L-
>phenylalanine) in our world food supply. This artificial dipeptide is
>hydrolyzed by the intestinal tract to produce L-phenylalanine which in
>excess is a known neurotoxin. Normal humans do not metabolize phenylalanine as efficiently as do lower species such as rodents and thus most of the previous studies in Aspartame effects on rats are irrelevant to the question, "does phenylalanine excess occur with Aspartame ingestion?".
>
> Preliminary studies in my laboratory provide tentative positive answers
>to both questions. Many studies of both acute and chronic ingestion of 34mg Aspartame/kg/day have demonstrated a two to five fold increase in semi->fasting blood phenylalanine concentrations (from approximately 50 to 250 µM) without concomitant increases in tyrosine or other aminoacids. The degree of increase by normal humans depends on several variables including the efficiency of tut transport, liver utilization, and growth rates. It was
>thought by many scientists and clinicians that this degree of phenylalanine
>increase would not affect brain function. However, currently available
>information indicates that this is not true.
>
> 1. In the developing fetus such a rise in material blood
> phenylalanine could be magnified four to six fold by
> the concentrative efforts of the placenta and fetal
> blood brain barrier. Thus a maternal phenylalanine of
> 150 µM could reach 900 µM in the developing fetal brain]
> cell and this concentration kills such cells in tissue
> culture. The effect of such an increased fetal brain
> concentrations in vivo would probably be much more
> subtle and expressed as mental retardation,
> microcephaly, or potential certain birth defects.
>
> 2. In the rapidly growing post-natal bran (children of 0-
> 12 months) irreversible brain damage could occur by the
> same mechanism.
>
> 3. In the adult we have found that changes in blood
> phenylalanine in these concentration ranges are
> associated with slowing of the electroencephalogram,
> and prolongation of cognitive function tests.
> Fortunately, these effects on the mature brain are
> reversible but provide clear evidence for negative
> effect on sensitive parameters of brain function.
>
> In view of these new (and confirmation of old) research
>findings I suggest the following:
>
> 1) Immediate labeling of all aspartame-containing foods,
> so the consumer will know how much phenylalanine
> he/she is ingesting.
>
> 2) Declare an immediate moratorium on addition of
> aspartame to more foods and remove it from all low-
> protein beverages, foods, and children's medications.
>
> 3) Provide funds not controlled by industry to:
>
> a. Allow active surveillance for potential side-effects
> of aspartame on newborns whose mothers dieted with
> Nutrasweet (aspartame) -containing foods.
>
> b. Allow active evaluation of other users whose
> complaints cannot be adequately studied at present.
>
> c. Clarify the dose relationship and mechanisms by
> which L-phenylalanine affects human brain function.
>
> Respectfully submitted
>
> Louis J. Elsas, II, M.D.
> Director, Division of Medical Genetics
> Professor of Pediatrics

[Furious_Male]

Hmm. Let me crack open another diet pepsi and read all this.