IS ASPARTAME A HAZARDOUS CHEMICAL?
THE INDEPENDENT, JUNE 6, 1999
WORLD’S TOP SWEETENER IS MADE WITH GM BACTERIA.
“A Monsanto spokeswoman confirmed that aspartame for the US market is often made using genetic engineering.”
OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration classifies methanol, formaldehyde and formic acid, components of aspartame as hazardous.
Carol Guilford convinced me to let her attempt to explain Aspartame, The Poison, in just a few paragraphs.
Aspartame is a very sophisticated, clever drug. So, first off, let me point out that this sophisticated, clever drug could never have been “discovered” accidentally.
Incidentally, James M. Schlatter, the scientist who, working on an ulcer drug licked his finger to find the sweet chemical NutraSweet has never been questioned.
PHENYLALANINE, 50% of the aspartame molecule is isolated from the chain of amino acids with which it exists in nature. Isolated phenylalanine, neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock, M.D. tells us crosses the blood brain barrier to interfere and kill the neurotransmitters of the brain by “exciting them to death.” (“Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills”)
In 1987, Dr. Louis J. Elsas, then Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Medical Genetics at Emory University testified at the hearing before the United States Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, concerning “NUTRASWEET”—HEALTH AND SAFETY CONCERNS.”
Dr. Elsas told the Senators, “In the developing fetus such a rise in maternal blood phenylalanine could be magnified four to six fold by the concentrative efforts of the placental and fetal blood brain barrier 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.”
Does autism ring a bell? When Dr. Elsas told the senate this significant fact about phenylalanine, in 1987, infant autism rates were 1 in 1500, today they are 1 in 150 and rising.
How many of us ever heard of Alzheimer’s, in 1980? The rates have doubled since aspartame was approved; a conservative statistic is 5 million in the US have the disease.
PHENYLALANINE converts to DKP, diketopiperazine, a tumor agent. The suspicious study of DKP by Searle Pharmaceuticals prompted the FDA to audit the experiment, the results of which are documented in the Bressler Report.
ASPARTIC ACID is 40% of the aspartame molecule. Dr. Madelon Price, in 1998 was Professor of Neurobiology at Washington University, in St. Louis, Missouri told her students: “Aspartic acid (aspartate) has been known to be a neurotoxin for 30 years. (now 40 years) Rodents that have ingested too much aspartame as infants are stunted as adults, obese and have sexual and reproductive dysfunctions. (7)
At the same lecture to her students that day, someone asked Dr. Price whether the phenylalanine in neotame, the aspartame clone, approved by the FDA was the same as the phenylalanine in aspartame. Dr. Price answered, it was. Neotame is now in the food supply, unlabeled, without a PKU warning for those who cannot metabolize phenylalanine. “Ah, says industry… but there’s such a small amount of phenylalanine in neotame, it doesn’t count.”
Wait a minute. Dr. Price explains, “Aspartate (aspartame) is additive in its effects with glutamate and other excitotoxins. In other words, a subtoxic dose of aspartame added to a subtoxic dose of glutamate (MSG) may add up to a toxic dose. Unfortunately it is hard to find food that does not contain added glutamate, and for some categories of food it does not have to be listed on the label.
METHANOL is 10% of the aspartame molecule. Methanol (wood alcohol) is a known poison and addictive, too. Doesn’t everyone knows someone who carries a diet Coke around all day?
The aspartame industry claims there is more methanol in a glass of orange juice than in aspartame products, but in a natural product, such as orange juice, the poisonous wood alcohol has the antidote for methanol inherently in it-- ethanol.
Free methanol turns into formaldehyde (embalming fluid).
In 1998, a research team from the biology department of the University of Barcelona, Spain, C.Trocho, et al concluded: “Aspartame converts to formaldehyde in vivo in the bodies of laboratory rats.”
“Formaldehyde is a highly reactive small molecule which strongly binds to proteins and nucleic acids forming adducts which are difficult to eliminate through the normal metabolism pathways… the amount of formaldehyde adducts coming from aspartame in tissue proteins and nucleic acids may be cumulative. It is concluded that aspartame consumption may constitute a hazard because of its contribution to the formation of formaldehyde adducts. “
The formaldehyde from the free methanol then breaks down to formic acid, ant sting venom.
Yes, a very, sophisticated, clever drug—killing us sweetly.
FOOTNOTES
1. Three female rats in the control group of 48 had small tumors.
2. Activist Betty Martini has a receipt from the Dept. of Health and Human Services for her request of the aspartame “report.” The cost was $42.30. The letter is dated June 6, 1995 http://www.presidiotex.com/92symptoms
3. The complete Bressler Report can be read at http://www.presidiotex.com/bressler
4. Dr. Ralph Walton compiled a list of all controlled human and animal studies looking for the effects of aspartame. Out of 90 independently-funded studies, 83 of them found one or more problems caused by aspartame. But out of the 74 studies funded by the aspartame industry (e.g., Monsanto, G.D. Searle, etc). every single one of them claimed that no problems were found.
5. Dr. Sandra Cabot (“The Liver Cleansing Diet”) in a position paper on aspartame explains the liver is so busy detoxing the poisons from aspartame, it cannot properly metabolize fat.
MSG is also an “excitotoxin” that causes obesity.
Dr. Blaylock writes, in an article for Nurse World Magazine… “dozens of independent laboratories have confirmed the connection between gross obesity and exposure to MSG early in life. More recent studies have also found it induces type 2 diabetes. “One of the most frightening connections is with sudden cardiac death. It is known that the heart’s electrical conduction system contains a number of glutamate receptors, as does the heart muscle itself. If these glutamate receptors are overstimulated, fatal arrhythmias can result.” Change in heart rate is No. 15 on the FDA list of aspartame symptoms.
6. Everything you ever wanted to know about the methanol in aspartame is in Dr. Monte’s letter of January, 2006. Author, columnist David L. Dewey has posted the letter at http://www.dldewey.com/monte.htm David’s concise article Aspartame - Sweetness Disguised as Disease or Death is at http://www.dldewey.com/aspar.htm
7. Dr. Price worked with Dr. John Olney, who in 1969 found aspartic acid caused nerve damage in the brains of mice. It was Dr. Olney who discovered that aspartame and MSG could kill brain cells by “exciting” them to death, hence the name “excitotoxin.”
In 1996, Dr. Olney showed the link between aspartame and brain cancer, up 10% after aspartame had been on the market for 3 years and one year after its inclusion in diet sodas.
Despite an airing on “60 Minutes”, Dr. Olney was media-blitzed by industrial power, in the same manner as Dr. Soffritti is being dismissed today, ten years later.
Death is No. 77 on the FDA list of aspartame symptoms.
