rmforall
02-12-2006, 09:28 AM
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1302
The Lowdown on Sweet? (Ramazzini Foundation, M Soffritti proof that
aspartame causes cancers), Melanie Warner, The New York Times:
Murray 2006.02.12
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/
business/yourmoney/12sweet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Article 2 of 26 in Business
The Lowdown on Sweet?
By MELANIE WARNER Published: February 12, 2006
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.
Pigi Cipelli for The New York Times
Dr. Morando Soffritti, who led tests of aspartame on 1,900 rats,
calls it a possible carcinogen. [ photo ]
Pigi Cipelli for The New York Times
A study conducted at an Italian cancer research center, above,
has rekindled the debate on aspartame. [ photo ]
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.
[ Dr. Soffritti's journal article on his findings is at
nytimes.com/business ]
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.
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."
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************************************************** *****
http://www.splendaexposed.com/articles/2005/04/splenda_the_art.html
Splenda, the Artificial Sweetener, Adds a Brown Sugar Blend
By MELANIE WARNER Published: April 4, 2005
Splenda, the popular artificial sweetener, is going brown.
The manufacturer of Splenda, the brand name given to the chemical
sweetener sucralose, is releasing a version that can be used as a
replacement for brown sugar.
It will be called Splenda Brown Sugar Blend.
"People can use it for baking their favorite recipe or sprinkle it on top
of cereal the same way they would use brown sugar," said John Leahy,
marketing director for Splenda at McNeil Nutritionals,
the division of Johnson & Johnson that sells and markets the sweetener.
Made from a blend of regular brown sugar and sucralose that has been
colored brown, Splenda's brown sugar will give consumers a 50 percent
reduction in calories because a smaller amount will be needed for baking
and other purposes.
For instance, if a recipe calls for one cup of brown sugar, Mr. Leahy said, only a half-cup of Splenda brown sugar will be necessary.
Splenda brown sugar will come in one-pound and two-pound bags
when sales start in September.
The popularity of Splenda took its manufacturers by surprise last year.
In November, Tate & Lyle, the British ingredients company that makes
sucralose, told its customers that its supply of sweetener would have to
be rationed because of high demand. McNeil markets Splenda
in the United States under a contract with Tate & Lyle.
Over the last year and a half, nearly every major food company has
incorporated sucralose into one or more of its products. Both PepsiCo
and Coca-Cola have opted to use the sweetener for new colas.
This month, for example, Pepsi is introducing PepsiOne with Splenda
and Coke will make a new version of Diet Coke sweetened
with Splenda that will be in stores in several months.
Splenda brown sugar is likely to add to the legal debate brewing over
Splenda's marketing campaign. The Sugar Association, which represents
the sugar industry; Merisant, the maker of the aspartame-based
artificial sweetener NutraSweet; and a lawyer in San Diego
have filed lawsuits against McNeil contending that Splenda's
marketing misleads consumers.
"The average consumer assumes that Splenda is related to sugar,"
said Howard M. Rubinstein, the San Diego lawyer. "They're exploiting
the fear some people have around other artificial sweeteners
like NutraSweet and presenting this as a more natural alternative."
Mr. Leahy said that its marketing for the new brown sugar product
would "remain consistent with Splenda's existing brand communication."
Neither the Sugar Association, based in Washington, nor Merisant,
which is based in Chicago, would comment. If Splenda brown sugar
catches on with consumers, it is likely to accelerate the decline of
old-fashioned sugar.
Sales of both white and brown sugar in the United States have been
declining for years.
Sales have dropped 10 percent since 1999, Mintel International,
a research firm based in Chicago, has reported.
************************************************** *****
February 12, 2006
Any unsuspected source of methanol, which the body always quickly
and largely turns into formaldehyde and then formic acid, must be
monitored, especially for high responsibility occupations, often with
night shifts, such as pilots and nuclear reactor operators.
In particular, the next review gives many recent mainstream
peer-reviewed studies that show formaldehyde,
always inevitably derived in the body from any methanol source,
including aspartame, causes endothelial injury,
ie, diabetic neuropathy -- among the most serious and complex
complications of diabetes.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1263
many studies on endothelial injury (diabetic neuropathy) by adducts of
formaldehyde derived from methylamine from many of the same sources
as also supply methanol (formaldehyde), including aspartame:
PH Yu et al: DJ Conklin et al: Murray 2005.12.04
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1237
ubiquitous potent uncontrolled co-factors in nutrition research are
formaldehyde from wood and tobacco smoke and many sources,
including from methanol in dark wines and liquors, in pectins
in fruits and vegetables, and in aspartame: Murray 2006.01.13
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/925
aspartame puts formaldehyde adducts into tissues, Part 1/2
full text Trocho & Alemany 1998.06.26
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona : Murray 2002.12.22
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1250
aspartame causes cancer in rats at levels approved for humans,
Morando Soffritti et al, Ramazzini Foundation, Italy &
National Toxicology Program
of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
2005.11.17 Env. Health Pers. 35 pages: Murray
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1271
combining aspartame and quinoline yellow, or MSG and brilliant blue,
harms nerve cells, eminent C. Vyvyan Howard et al, 2005
education.guardian.co.uk, Felicity Lawrence: Murray 2005.12.21
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1279
all three aspartame metabolites harm human erythrocyte [red blood cell]
membrane enzyme activity, KH Schulpis et al, two studies in 2005,
Athens, Greece, 2005.12.14: 2004 research review, RL Blaylock:
Murray 2006.01.14
As a medical layman, I suggest that evidence mandates immediate
exploration of the role of these ubiquitious, potent formaldehyde
sources as co-factors in epidemiology, research, diagnosis,
and treatment in a wide variety of disorders.
Folic acid, from fruits and vegetables, plays a role by powerfully
protecting against methanol (formaldehyde) toxicity.
Many common drugs, such as aspirin, interfere with folic acid,
as do some mutations in relevant enzymes.
The majority of aspartame reactors are female.
In mutual service, Rich Murray
************************************************** *****
"Of course, everyone chooses, as a natural priority,
to actively find, quickly share, and act upon the facts
about healthy and safe food, drink, and environment."
Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@comcast.net
505-501-2298 1943 Otowi Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/messages
group with 151 members, 1,302 posts in a public, searchable archive
http://RMForAll.blogspot.com http://AspartameNM.blogspot.com
Dark wines and liquors, as well as aspartame, provide
similar levels of methanol, above 100 mg daily, for
long-term heavy users, 2 L daily, about 6 cans.
Methanol is inevitably largely turned into formaldehyde,
and thence largely into formic acid.
It is the major cause of the dreaded symptoms of "next
morning" hangover.
Fully 11% of aspartame is methanol -- 1,120 mg aspartame
in 2 L diet soda, almost six 12-oz cans, gives 123 mg
methanol (wood alcohol). If 30% of the methanol is turned
into formaldehyde, the amount of formaldehyde, 37 mg,
is 18.5 times the USA EPA limit for daily formaldehyde in
drinking water, 2.0 mg in 2 L average daily drinking water.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1108
faults in 1999 July EPA 468-page formaldehyde profile:
Elzbieta Skrzydlewska PhD, Assc. Prof., Medical U. of
Bialystok, Poland, abstracts -- ethanol, methanol,
formaldehyde, formic acid, acetaldehyde, lipid peroxidation,
green tea, aging: Murray 2004.08.08 2005.07.11
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/835
ATSDR: EPA limit 1 ppm formaldehyde in drinking water July
1999: Murray 2002.05.30 rmforall
Aspartame is made of phenylalanine (50% by weight) and
aspartic acid (39%), both ordinary amino acids, bound
loosely together by methanol (wood alcohol, 11%).
The readily released methanol from aspartame is within hours
turned by the liver into formaldehyde and then formic acid,
both potent, cumulative toxins.
************************************************** *****
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1302
The Lowdown on Sweet? (Ramazzini Foundation, M Soffritti proof that
aspartame causes cancers), Melanie Warner, The New York Times:
Murray 2006.02.12
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/
business/yourmoney/12sweet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Article 2 of 26 in Business
The Lowdown on Sweet?
By MELANIE WARNER Published: February 12, 2006
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.
Pigi Cipelli for The New York Times
Dr. Morando Soffritti, who led tests of aspartame on 1,900 rats,
calls it a possible carcinogen. [ photo ]
Pigi Cipelli for The New York Times
A study conducted at an Italian cancer research center, above,
has rekindled the debate on aspartame. [ photo ]
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.
[ Dr. Soffritti's journal article on his findings is at
nytimes.com/business ]
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.
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."
************************************************** *****
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************************************************** *****
http://www.splendaexposed.com/articles/2005/04/splenda_the_art.html
Splenda, the Artificial Sweetener, Adds a Brown Sugar Blend
By MELANIE WARNER Published: April 4, 2005
Splenda, the popular artificial sweetener, is going brown.
The manufacturer of Splenda, the brand name given to the chemical
sweetener sucralose, is releasing a version that can be used as a
replacement for brown sugar.
It will be called Splenda Brown Sugar Blend.
"People can use it for baking their favorite recipe or sprinkle it on top
of cereal the same way they would use brown sugar," said John Leahy,
marketing director for Splenda at McNeil Nutritionals,
the division of Johnson & Johnson that sells and markets the sweetener.
Made from a blend of regular brown sugar and sucralose that has been
colored brown, Splenda's brown sugar will give consumers a 50 percent
reduction in calories because a smaller amount will be needed for baking
and other purposes.
For instance, if a recipe calls for one cup of brown sugar, Mr. Leahy said, only a half-cup of Splenda brown sugar will be necessary.
Splenda brown sugar will come in one-pound and two-pound bags
when sales start in September.
The popularity of Splenda took its manufacturers by surprise last year.
In November, Tate & Lyle, the British ingredients company that makes
sucralose, told its customers that its supply of sweetener would have to
be rationed because of high demand. McNeil markets Splenda
in the United States under a contract with Tate & Lyle.
Over the last year and a half, nearly every major food company has
incorporated sucralose into one or more of its products. Both PepsiCo
and Coca-Cola have opted to use the sweetener for new colas.
This month, for example, Pepsi is introducing PepsiOne with Splenda
and Coke will make a new version of Diet Coke sweetened
with Splenda that will be in stores in several months.
Splenda brown sugar is likely to add to the legal debate brewing over
Splenda's marketing campaign. The Sugar Association, which represents
the sugar industry; Merisant, the maker of the aspartame-based
artificial sweetener NutraSweet; and a lawyer in San Diego
have filed lawsuits against McNeil contending that Splenda's
marketing misleads consumers.
"The average consumer assumes that Splenda is related to sugar,"
said Howard M. Rubinstein, the San Diego lawyer. "They're exploiting
the fear some people have around other artificial sweeteners
like NutraSweet and presenting this as a more natural alternative."
Mr. Leahy said that its marketing for the new brown sugar product
would "remain consistent with Splenda's existing brand communication."
Neither the Sugar Association, based in Washington, nor Merisant,
which is based in Chicago, would comment. If Splenda brown sugar
catches on with consumers, it is likely to accelerate the decline of
old-fashioned sugar.
Sales of both white and brown sugar in the United States have been
declining for years.
Sales have dropped 10 percent since 1999, Mintel International,
a research firm based in Chicago, has reported.
************************************************** *****
February 12, 2006
Any unsuspected source of methanol, which the body always quickly
and largely turns into formaldehyde and then formic acid, must be
monitored, especially for high responsibility occupations, often with
night shifts, such as pilots and nuclear reactor operators.
In particular, the next review gives many recent mainstream
peer-reviewed studies that show formaldehyde,
always inevitably derived in the body from any methanol source,
including aspartame, causes endothelial injury,
ie, diabetic neuropathy -- among the most serious and complex
complications of diabetes.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1263
many studies on endothelial injury (diabetic neuropathy) by adducts of
formaldehyde derived from methylamine from many of the same sources
as also supply methanol (formaldehyde), including aspartame:
PH Yu et al: DJ Conklin et al: Murray 2005.12.04
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1237
ubiquitous potent uncontrolled co-factors in nutrition research are
formaldehyde from wood and tobacco smoke and many sources,
including from methanol in dark wines and liquors, in pectins
in fruits and vegetables, and in aspartame: Murray 2006.01.13
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/925
aspartame puts formaldehyde adducts into tissues, Part 1/2
full text Trocho & Alemany 1998.06.26
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona : Murray 2002.12.22
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1250
aspartame causes cancer in rats at levels approved for humans,
Morando Soffritti et al, Ramazzini Foundation, Italy &
National Toxicology Program
of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
2005.11.17 Env. Health Pers. 35 pages: Murray
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1271
combining aspartame and quinoline yellow, or MSG and brilliant blue,
harms nerve cells, eminent C. Vyvyan Howard et al, 2005
education.guardian.co.uk, Felicity Lawrence: Murray 2005.12.21
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1279
all three aspartame metabolites harm human erythrocyte [red blood cell]
membrane enzyme activity, KH Schulpis et al, two studies in 2005,
Athens, Greece, 2005.12.14: 2004 research review, RL Blaylock:
Murray 2006.01.14
As a medical layman, I suggest that evidence mandates immediate
exploration of the role of these ubiquitious, potent formaldehyde
sources as co-factors in epidemiology, research, diagnosis,
and treatment in a wide variety of disorders.
Folic acid, from fruits and vegetables, plays a role by powerfully
protecting against methanol (formaldehyde) toxicity.
Many common drugs, such as aspirin, interfere with folic acid,
as do some mutations in relevant enzymes.
The majority of aspartame reactors are female.
In mutual service, Rich Murray
************************************************** *****
"Of course, everyone chooses, as a natural priority,
to actively find, quickly share, and act upon the facts
about healthy and safe food, drink, and environment."
Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@comcast.net
505-501-2298 1943 Otowi Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/messages
group with 151 members, 1,302 posts in a public, searchable archive
http://RMForAll.blogspot.com http://AspartameNM.blogspot.com
Dark wines and liquors, as well as aspartame, provide
similar levels of methanol, above 100 mg daily, for
long-term heavy users, 2 L daily, about 6 cans.
Methanol is inevitably largely turned into formaldehyde,
and thence largely into formic acid.
It is the major cause of the dreaded symptoms of "next
morning" hangover.
Fully 11% of aspartame is methanol -- 1,120 mg aspartame
in 2 L diet soda, almost six 12-oz cans, gives 123 mg
methanol (wood alcohol). If 30% of the methanol is turned
into formaldehyde, the amount of formaldehyde, 37 mg,
is 18.5 times the USA EPA limit for daily formaldehyde in
drinking water, 2.0 mg in 2 L average daily drinking water.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1108
faults in 1999 July EPA 468-page formaldehyde profile:
Elzbieta Skrzydlewska PhD, Assc. Prof., Medical U. of
Bialystok, Poland, abstracts -- ethanol, methanol,
formaldehyde, formic acid, acetaldehyde, lipid peroxidation,
green tea, aging: Murray 2004.08.08 2005.07.11
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/835
ATSDR: EPA limit 1 ppm formaldehyde in drinking water July
1999: Murray 2002.05.30 rmforall
Aspartame is made of phenylalanine (50% by weight) and
aspartic acid (39%), both ordinary amino acids, bound
loosely together by methanol (wood alcohol, 11%).
The readily released methanol from aspartame is within hours
turned by the liver into formaldehyde and then formic acid,
both potent, cumulative toxins.
************************************************** *****