MY ASPARTAME EXPERIMENT
A FEMALE RAT DEVELOPED A MAMMARY TUMOR SO LARGE SHE OFTEN USED IT AS A PILLOW
BY
VICTORIA INNESS-BROWN, M.A.
Introduction by author Carol Guilford
“In any such study of even a few hundred test animals, it takes no more than a dozen or so of them to exhibit a particular lesion… to associate with the test agent, i.e., aspartame or its related chemicals.”
Dr. Adrian Gross, FDA toxicologist in a letter to Senator Howard Metzenbaum, Oct. 30, 1986.
When Victoria Inness-Brown contacted me about “explosive information” concerning aspartame (Equal,NutraSweet) the controversial, artificial, chemical sweetener, I didn’t know what to expect. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence of aspartame’s danger to human health (tires have been recalled for less) it remains in 6,000 food, drink and medicinal products.
Who could imagine a private citizen would do an aspartame experiment with 108 rats for 2 years and 8 months?
The late Dr. Adrian Gross explained that rodent experiments are the means to find out what a particular substance will do to human beings.
Look at Victoria’s pictures of her animals that ingested the equivalent amount of aspartame (in human terms) of less than one diet coke a day, until their spontaneous death. Importantly, the control groups, those fed no aspartame were free from visible effects. (1)
The artificial sweetener, Aspartame, was approved by the FDA, in 1981. By the 1990’s, the FDA had a list of 92 symptoms reported to them by 10,000 consumers, a list revealed to the public under the Freedom of Information Act. (2)
Personally, I have read thousands of cases from aspartame victims, many who post on Yahoo’s Aspartame Victim Support Group list, but Victoria’s photographs, the first ever to be released from any study, give meaning to the hypothesis, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Following is Victoria’s gutsy account of why she did her experiment, the protocol she used to conduct it and the remarkable pictures of the rats. Victoria says--
I WANTED VISUAL PROOF
I did my aspartame experiment because my family was addicted to diet soda. After researching the effects of aspartame, I strongly believed the artificial sweetener might one day lead to their illness and even early death.
Most influential in my research on the aspartame molecule was The Bressler Report. (3) Dr. Jerome Bressler, M.D., led an FDA task force to attempt to validate the authenticity of a study done by G.D. Searle, the pharmaceutical company that held the patent to the “sweetener.”
Dr. Bressler’s team did the Searle audit between April 25, 1977 and August 4, 1977 of study PT #988S73, a 115 Week Oral Tumorigenicity Study in the Rat. The rat study was supposedly done by Searle to examine the adverse effects of the crystalline form of aspartame’s breakdown from phenylalanine, 50% of the chemical’s composition to SC-19192, diketopiperazine (DKP).
Bressler’s force found irregularities in Searle’s experiment-- missing raw data, errors and discrepancies in available data, exclusions of animals, and animals that had masses removed and were then returned to the study.
It is clear Searle misrepresented the carcinogenicity of DKP and hid incriminating data from the FDA.
One unreported tissue mass in Searle’s study measured 5.0 X 4.5 X 2.5 cm. Equivalent to 2 in. X 1.75 in. X 1.0 in. —a significant sized tumor that should be visible to the naked eye, hard to miss.
I was convinced I would see tumors and possibly other harmful effects to convince my family and friends to avoid aspartame.
