Aspartame: Open Letter to Beth Hubrich, Calorie Control Council
Ms. Beth Hubrich,
Your name evokes disgust in good people caring about nutrition and wanting healthy babies with a chance at life and a normal future. Your continuous drumbeat of lies about poisonous aspartame is genocidal! How many thousands of babies perished, were borne disabled or died before birth because mothers listened to you? How many are autistic or forever cursed with cerebral palsy? http://www.rense.com/general/asp.htm
You admit the Calorie Control Council represents the low-calorie and low fat food & beverage industry. You shill for manufacturers/marketers of chemical sweeteners while innocent infants die unborn. In New Zealand I met a tearful aspartame user who had eight tragic miscarriages. She knew not that she had killed her babies with the venom you hire to push. Wages of Judas!!
Aspartame is an excitoneurotoxic, genetically engineered and carcinogenic drug that damages the mitochondria and interacts with drugs and vaccine. A 1000 page medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic by H. J. Roberts, M.D. discusses the hazards of pregnant women using aspartame. He was named The Best Doctor in the Country by a medical journal in 1984. Or you can read about birth defects in Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock’s book, Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills. I’ve sent you profound research reports by the highest medical authorities confirming the deadliness of this poison, still you relentlessly campaign to slaughter ever more innocents. www.sunsentpress.com www.russellblaylockmd.com
The truth is that any “expert” promoting aspartame has a financial connection, like yourself, with the businesses that make or sell this sewage. It was never proved safe and cannot be. Even the National Soft Drink Association objected to aspartame’s approval, which charges were published the Senate Congressional Record of May 7th, 1985.
You follow me around the Internet. January 14, ’03 you wrote Jay Foster: “We understand that Betty Martini will be a guest on your January 15, 2003 show discussing “Hazards of Aspartame” and take this opportunity to share some information regarding the safety of aspartame.” You then claim the safety of aspartame is not questionable. Many erudite books by famous doctors refute that stupid statement. Several movies explain the politics and how it was marketed after FDA revoked the petition for approval.
World renowned Dr.John Olney’s testimony to the Board of Inquiry predicted that birth defects were a given certainty. should aspartame be approved. No question about the safety of aspartame? Then explain why the the Justice Department started to prosecute aspartame’s maker? They had no defense, so the defense attorneys hired the two US Prosecutors so the case would expire with the statute of limitations. To put it clearly, the Godfather hired the District Attorney! The open & shut case of criminal fraud was never prosecuted, nor can it be reopened. / www.wnho.net/dr_olney1.doc
Jerome Bressler authored the infamous Bressler Report exposing some of the studies: Two of the original studies are restored to his report. Jerome Bressler told me and Lane Shore that they were so damning that FDA deleted them from his report to protect the manufacturers. These were teratology, BIRTH DEFECT, studies. FDA knew full well that aspartame causes birth defects. It took us 8 years to find them but they are now in Bressler’s report and are all over the web. Bressler said the studies showed birth defects to which the public was never alerted. http://www.mpwhi.com/complete_bressler_report.pdf
Now Dr. Woodrow Monte just wrote While Science Sleeps after he found four additional teratology studies, all showing birth defects. And you say aspartame safety is not questionable? Do you consider 6 studies showing aspartame causes birth defects meaningless? How can you ignore the FDA “admitting” aspartame causes birth defects. Dr. Monte explains how the G. D. Searle Co. made a deal with the FDA to release no studies showing birth defects. The FDA did just that, and the river of autism floods our land. Dr Monte made somebody furious because they blew up his house with him in it and he woke up in the hospital. If you have an inkling of sincerity about the work you do, get While Science Sleeps right away!
Here is Dr. Louis Elsas’ testimony before the Board of Inquiry, a pediatric professor then with Emory University in genetics. http://www.wnho.net/dr_elsas_testimony.pdf Notice his comments on aspartame and birth defects.
You line up agencies from FDA to AMA like birds on a wire chirping Aspartame is safe! Aspartame is safe! The industry has ties with them all, just as it owns your employer, and you. Internationally aspartame was rubber stamp approved on the basis of corrupt FDA blessings. In New Zealand I visited Food Standards who said, “We relied on the FDA”. How did it get approved in England? Through a business deal between the manufacturer and Dr. Paul Turner of the agency there. http://www.mpwhi.com/how_aspartame_got_approved_in_england.htm Parliament had a big blowout but did not rescind the order. No studies were done in England. Dr. Jacqueline Verrett, FDA toxicologist, testified before Congress in 1987 that aspartame was on the market then and still had not been proven safe. We are very knowledgeable of the game industry plays.
A study is only legitimate if its by independent, unbiased researchers, unfunded by the producers. Industry showed in their original studies how far they will go to have something approved that is toxic. Dr. Ralph Walton investigated for 60 Minutes the difference when studies were done by independent researchers as compared by those funded by industry. 92% of independent studies showed aspartame is unsafe. He said if you eliminate 6 studies the FDA had something to do with, and one pro-industry summary, 100% of independent studies show the problems we’ve been seeing for decades. Only industry controlled and financed studies showed safety, and that’s all you care about! This is why the FDA once attempted to have G. D. Searle indicted for fraud. You can’t take a poisonous drug and show it safe. http://www.dorway.com/peerrev.html
Because of the behavior of the original manufacturer, G. D. Searle, and the shenanigans they tried to pull, Dr. John Olney demanded they do their studies in his lab so he could make sure the studies were legitimate. As expected, the studies showed brain damage. Olney thought it wouldn’t be approved but did not know that Searle didn’t give the results of these studies to the FDA. http://www.sweetremedy.tv/pages/rumsfeld3.html
I’m not telling you anything you don’t know already. I’ve sent you information consistently for over a decade, and your notes showing your concern about me giving out the facts on radio and to journalists confirms your frustration in not being able to conceal that aspartame is but a chemical poison. Your epistles to papers like the Miami Herald attempting to get people to believe aspartame is safe for pregnant women, phenylketonurics and consumers with liver problems is an abomination before God! http://www.wnho.net/mh_aspartame_letter.htm This response by Dr. Russell Blaylock about it has been around the world. Note he says: “It has come to my attention that the Calorie Control Council, a front group for the NutraSweet Company, recently suggested that aspartame was safe for women to use during pregnancy, as well as by those with serious liver disease and phenylketonurics. This is the most serious breech of public trust in the history of this nation. There is not one long-term study of aspartame safety ever conducted on the offspring of pregnant women consuming aspartame. Yet, there are numerous studies indicating aspartame could pose a serious danger to both mother and infant.”
Our new century is full of insanity and terror. 400 atomic-electric Fukushimas like ghouls wait to rain massacre planet wide on stumbling mankind. Japan is but a single earthquake from eradication. There is no solution to the perpetual storage required for millions of “spent uranium” tubes which shall inevitably shed everlasting destruction. Is this your rationale: “We’re all going to die anyway and I’m making big money poisoning babies, so what difference does it make?” My expectation is less morbid. I believe mankind and the human family will be divinely saved, and every life is precious, so now who speaks for the unborn? Who will shout against genocide and blind commercial greed? You’re a Pied Piper, Beth Hubrich, caring not for the devastation you preach. Shame!
There have been many experts who have written against you pushing aspartame on pregnant women: http://www.mpwhi.com/aspartame_mob_figts_evidence.htm You’ve read these before and you keep it up.
Suppose you have to care for autistic children? How would you like it and how upset would you be if someone lied you into using it, so now your dreams are smashed and you future is an endless dark tunnel of caring for these incurable victims of a known poison, and it was all done to get the dollars they made off of selling you the poison. Multiply that a thousand, a million times. How soulless one must be to live such a perfidious life! Who can count the babies perishing from your lies? Think of the weeping women wanting family and children but never told aspartame is an endocrine disrupting agent, stimulates prolactin, changes the menses and causes infertility, so they forever mourn. There is a Higher Power, and I would not covet your judgment!
Dr. Adrian Gross, FDA scientist and toxicologist, told Congress in l985 that aspartame violates the Delaney Amendment because it causes brain tumors and brain cancer. Further he said FDA shouldn’t have been able to set an allowable ADI. What do you expect when the molecule breaks down to diketopiperazine, a brain tumor agent. His last words to Congress were “And if the FDA violates its own laws who is left to protect the public.” We are here, Beth Hubrich, because you lie. The public has no governmental defender since FDA gets most of its revenues from the drug makers, and is simply their Branch Office in Washington. Do you know how hard it is to listen to a young woman cry “I want to live, I want to live” when she has several aspartame brain tumors?
The Report to Schools written by aspartame experts, and the ADD people reveals the horrors visited on children whose parents were not warned. http://www.mpwhi.com/report_on_aspartame_and_children.htm What do you think an excitotoxin, aspartic acid, a neurotoxin, phenylalanine and free methyl alcohol does to the brains of children. A Norwegian study showed aspartame destroys the brain, especially in the area of learning.
Over a hundred studies by independent researchers show aspartame toxicity, but the Calorie Control Council and you, Beth Hubrich, fight them all. The 1974 FDA task force examining aspartame and G.D.Searle concluded: “we have uncovered serious deficiencies in Searle’s operations and practices, which undermine the basis for reliance on Searle’s integrity in conducting high quality animal research to accurately determine the toxic potential of its products.” The task force report concluded with the recommendation that G.D. Searle should face a Grand Jury “to identify more particularly the nature of the violations, and to identify all those responsible.”
So what did G. D. Searle do? They sued to get the comments of the Task Force off the record. Those records are forever. You can’t clean them up. Aspartame is simply poison. Six studies show FDA knew aspartame causes birth defects, and admitted it. If you have any integrity retract your assurances of aspartame safety.
Here’s the manufacturers’ game: Diana Dow Edwards was a researcher funded by Monsanto to study possible birth defects. Preliminary reports showed damage from the poison, so funding for the study was cut off.
The International Life Sciences Institute, an industry front group, lives by the rule: If you can’t say aspartame is safe you get no more funding. Read about ILSI in the UPI Investigation by Gregory Gordon. ttp://www.mpwhi.com/upi_1987_aspartame_report.pdf This is how industry works to get what it wants. Notice how Dr. Wurtman was threatened and his research funds were rejected. Now he speaks against aspartame no more, but his paper trail says it all including his book Dietary Phenylalanine and Brain Function.
Your 2003 report says, “Importantly, aspartame never enters the bloodstream and therefore cannot travel to essential organs.” Was it written by Mother Goose? Of course, it enters the bloodstream as this post from an industry book admits: http://www.wnho.net/answering_monsantos_denial.htm
In the attached notice you say, “While we are pleased that ANSES recognizes that available data do not suggest an adverse effect of low-calorie sweeteners during pregnancy their recommendation for further research, based on a single study may unduly alarm pregnant women.” In other words, ” don’t do a study on aspartame”. How alarmed do you think women are today when they bring home an autistic baby and wonder why they were never told the truth?
Note how easy is it to show aspartame quickly affects the brains of children? Dr. Miguel Baret in the Dominion Republic changed the diet of 360 children from diet pop to aspartame juice. He told me if only a small amount of the children were affected it would not be conclusive. However, since almost all of them suffered with aspartame symptoms and many developed “abnormal restlessness, lack of concentration, irritability and depression, it was obvious that aspartame was the cause. Nobody who knows how deadly aspartame is would even do a study on children but this was accidental and serves to show you that almost immediately aspartame effects children.
Beth Hubrich, retract your report. Not a shred of neutral evidence shows aspartame safe for pregnant women. But an overwhelming flood of medical testimony proves it deadly for mother and child. Hang your head in shame! You’ve seen the documentation for years. You know aspartame is a weapon of mass destruction. Be honest with yourself and the rest of humanity.
Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum, Founder
Mission Possible International
www.mpwhi.com, www.dorway.com, www.wnho.net
Aspartame Toxicity Center, www.holisticmed/aspartame
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Whistler Blowers, Insiders
methanol from aspartame, wood and cigarette smoke, and
many sources is made by ADH1 enzyme into formaldehyde
within cells inside walls of human blood vessels,
harming adjacent tissues, the WC Monte paradigm:
Rich Murray 2012.06.28
The 200 mg aspartame in a 12-oz can of aspartame drink
is 11% by weight methanol, 22 mg, which is soon released
from the GI tract into the blood, where quickly any tissues
with high levels of the ADH1 enzyme within the cells of
blood capillary walls and adjacent tissues, especially
liver, kidney, brain, retina, etc., in humans only, turn
the methanol into formaldehyde within these cells, which,
being highly reactive, quickly binds with and disables
DNA, RNA, and proteins inside the cells, causing cell death,
attracting macrophages (white blood cells), which also die,
creating durable, cumulative, evolving complex micro lesions.
This affects the fetus, as well, or not so well…
So, there are many resulting novel modern
“diseases of civilization” in humans only, for each type of
damaged tissue, including Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis,
lupus, arthritis, the birth defects spina bifida, autism,
and Asperger’s, many specific cancers, and chronic ailments
of liver, kidney, heart, lung, joint, skin, muscle, etc.
The Monte methanol/formaldehyde toxicity paradigm
MMFTP is backed by 740 references, given free online as
full pdf texts by Prof. (retired 2004, Arizona State University,
Nutrition and Food Sciences) Woodrow C. Monte,
http://www.WhileScienceSleeps.com,
along with his 2012 January 240 page text
“While Science Sleeps”, with two free chapters on
“Autism and Other Birth Defects”, and “Multiple Sclerosis”,
and free full earlier articles and references on MMFTP.
Other methanol/formaldehyde sources include
wood, peat and cigarette smoke, some fresh coffees,
fermented and smoked foods, fruits juices vegetables heated
and sealed wet in jars and cans, some dark wines and liquors,
bacteria in the colon, genetic flaws in metabolism, vehicle
fumes, leaky fossil fuel stoves and heaters, processed wood
products of all kinds, mobile homes, old Ditto type purple ink
mimeograph duplicating machines in schools and offices,
chemical biology autopsy mortuary facilities, heated wood
in particleboard, pressed wood and paper factories,
and many personal care cleaners and products…
methanol/formaldehyde paradigm for multiple sclerosis,
free full 56 page chapter 9 pdf, While Science Sleeps,
146 full text references online, Prof. Woodrow C. Monte:
Rich Murray 2012.03.20
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2012/03/methanolformaldehyde-paradigm-for.html
http://www.whilesciencesleeps.com/references/
list of 745 free full text pdf medical research references
Aspartame: The hidden danger [methanol/formaldehyde]
in our midst and how it kills us, 12 page review of
While Science Sleeps text (Woodrow C Monte),
International Health News, whole June issue,
Editor: William R Ware PhD: Rich Murray 2012.06.08
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2012/06/aspartame-hidden-danger.html
http://www.yourhealthbase.com/issue.htm
http://www.yourhealthbase.com/ihn228.pdf
free full text pdf 16 pages
The reader needs to know that the science just isn’t there to support any safety issue with aspartame. Repeating, there are NO acceptable, reproducible scientific papers suggesting harm from aspartame. But there are questionable conspiracy theorists, including Martini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy), Mercola (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mercola), Monte, etc (none of whom have documented risk assessment nor toxicology skills). But these people profit from books (Blaylock, Roberts, and now Monte), false treatments (Hull), and other misleading innuendo (Martini). Right now they are trying to influence public opinion in Europe, because the EFSA is supposed to release another investigation into aspartame in September. The only problem is nothing has changed.
In reality critics all fail to understand that any perceived issue with aspartame reflects the user’s own questionable health. Here are the facts. Only methanol amongst aspartame degradation products presents any risk people—phenylalanine and aspartate are found in greater concentrations in normal foods, like milk and meat. But risk is dose dependent and the risk from the amount of methanol produced from aspartame degradation is also non-existent. Moreover, just like the methanol found in fruit juice, that released from aspartame is a vital nutrient. Why? Methanol is oxidized to formaldehyde and formate–both are chemically directly converted by the (tetrahydro)folate vitamin system into very valuable methyl groups. These methyl groups detoxify the true excitotoxic homocysteine, protect DNA from strand breakage (by converting break fostering uracil into methyluracil (thymine)), and when systematically methylated, methylated DNA acts to prevent errant DNA duplication. For more on its cycle see the figure at the top of p 3000 here, http://download.cell.com/AJHG/pdf/PIIS0002929707614001.pdf?intermediate=true.
Formate and formaldehyde are [quoting another] “produced in the body during the endogenous demethylation of many compounds, including many foods and drugs. For example, the demethylation of the caffeine found in one cup of coffee produces 30 mg of formaldehyde (Imbus, 1988). Formaldehyde is essential in one-carbon pool intermediary metabolism. The metabolite of formaldehyde, formic acid, is a substrate for purine nucleotide synthesis (Sheehan and Tully, 1983). It can be calculated that more than 50,000 mg [that's 50 g] of formaldehyde is produced and metabolized in an adult human body daily and that an adult human liver will metabolize 22 mg of formaldehyde per minute (Clary and Sullivan, 1999). Consequently, it is quite clear that the formaldehyde from aspartame provides a trivial contribution to total formaldehyde exposure and metabolism in the body” (p 18 in and refs from http://www.fte.ugent.be/vlaz/Magnuson2007.pdf).
Do these facts not make clear that any encountered problem arises not from the aspartame, methanol, formaldehyde or even formate, but from personal metabolism issues in detoxifying these otherwise critical precursors to valuable methyl groups? These issues with folate (and the related B12 or homocysteine) are potentially numerous. Many people are deficient in folate or B12. Forty percent of some populations have folate polymorphisms, see http://download.cell.com/AJHG/pdf/PIIS0002929707614001.pdf?intermediate=true.
All adverse side effects ever claimed from aspartame are really due to these personal folate-related issues, not to this sweetener. And that probably includes oft-reported migraines (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11121176) too. And that is my real point: in people with these personal issues, these adverse risks exist whether one uses aspartame or not. Widespread overindulgence in ethanol (acetaldehyde is an inhibitor of the folate reactions) only exacerbates these risks, just as it exacerbates breast and other cancers and contributes to fetal alcohol syndrome.
Now as to this ridiculous post, Martini has been restating these same old worn out arguments (note most predate even 1990) for twenty years. And time after time experiments have refuted every argument at considerable cost and waste to the taxpayers. Aspartame is the most studied substance known and no relevant western nation even questions its safety any longer. The people she cites likely don’t even know what folate is, why it is relevant to aspartame metabolism, much have ever even considered it an issue. Critics like Roberts have never checked their “aspartame responders” for folate issues. In one case Roberts claimed aspartame caused thrombocytopenia, yet there are over 100 citations to that associated with folate deficiency alone.
Let’s consider some of her latest nonsense above. Martini cites ‘Diana Dow Edwards’ as associating aspartame with birth defects. Well it isn’t and never was aspartame; it is folate deficiency in the subjects, be it animal (from deficient food) or humans, who became so deficient that folate fortification of grain products was mandated in 1998 to prevent serious birth defects in infants of deficient mothers. That date is relevant also because since that date nothing of relevance has been published about aspartame that stands any test warranting further EFSA or FDA consideration. Take a look at her blog in that light.
She claims Wurtman speaks about aspartame no more. Perhaps that is because he coauthored a paper in 1998 refuting his own work, concluding that “large daily doses of aspartame had no effect on neuropsychologic, neurophysiologic, or behavioral functioning in healthy young adults” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9734727). Olney knows better than to speak out on this issue: his animals had folate issues that were rather embarrassing.
I would comment on the work of Dr. Michael Baret, if that work was even abstracted by the US National Library of Medicine. Citing such a finding may be more hearsay. On the other hand the result reported could be true, if the children involved were malnourished and vitamin deficient. Oops, that might well be the case, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20810820. And then that might explain his results, so also why they were not abstracted.
Aspartame will again be judged completely safe in September when EFSA revisits the issue, because there are still no published papers claiming any safety issue with aspartame that cannot be completely explained by improper controls, often performed without any understanding of the extreme relevance of folate status to the issues they cite as meaningful markers (Collison et al, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22697049; Alleva et al, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20837131 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22509243).
Consider in antithesis to Collison et al these points: learning and folate provides 235 references, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Learning%2Cfolate, the effects of folate on the metabolic syndrome provide 162 references, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=folate%2Cmetabolic%20syndrome%20, and even insulin tolerance test and folate provide 32 references, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Insulin%20Tolerance%20Test%2Cfolate. And in antithesis to Alleva et al the following links to PubMed afford many examples of folate (deficiency) connections with angiogenesis, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=folate%2Cangiogenesis. Homocysteine also has bad effects on angiogenesis too, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=homocysteine%2Cangiogenesis. From these lists two papers cited below make clear that this Alleva et al paper is also entirely irrelevant for aspartame risk assessment, because they failed to properly control their experiment to discount known folate and/or homocysteine alternative explanations:
Homocysteine-impaired angiogenesis is associated with VEGF/VEGFR inhibition, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22652658
The effects of homocysteine and folic acid on angiogenesis and VEGF expression during chicken vascular development, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22085786
My take home message is that aspartame is perfectly safe used as directed and has been judged so by all the world’s relevant health authorities for nearly 30 years. The arguments cited here are completely discounted by risk analysis scientists worldwide.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
[ Rich Murray: As his friend, I spaced the lines on his post to make it more easy to read -- we have agreed to disagree, so I will add my comments in square brackets. First, John E. Garst is a fully trained, experienced, and published biochemist and toxicologist -- he tells me he is not in any way funded by vested interests -- however as a graduate student at the University of Iowa, the methanol researchers there, according to WC Monte, were heavily influenced by industry to, for instance, portray formic acid (so harmless that Monte put it on his lunch salads in his lab for dressing) as the main toxic metabolite of methanol, in order to distract the world from realizing the true extreme toxicity of formaldehyde, made inside human cells from methanol.
Monte and Garst have something in common, beside being my friends -- neither have so far been able to get their hobby horses published in main stream journals... a few speak up for Monte, while I know of none, yet, for Garst.
Ever evolving evidence confirms, disconfirms -- that's science -- so in this tale, two barking dogs, wagging their tails -- buy one, the other, both, neither, or do two dogs wag one tail, or one tail wag two dogs -- what did I just say? Well, never mind, I said it and that's it, I'll never take it back! ]
The reader needs to know that the science just isn’t there to support any safety issue with aspartame.
[ sure, it breaks down in the GI tract, releasing two amino acids and 22 mg methanol per can diet drink -- no aspartame inside anyone, folks...
John, you can't dry up the Nile with "de nial"... ]
Repeating, there are NO acceptable, reproducible scientific papers suggesting harm from aspartame.
But there are questionable conspiracy theorists, including
Martini ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy ),
Mercola ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mercola ), Monte, etc
(none of whom have documented risk assessment nor toxicology skills).
But these people profit from books (Blaylock, Roberts, and now Monte),
false treatments (Hull), and other misleading innuendo (Martini).
[ Monte may win a MacArthur Fellowship or a Nobel Prize, but his book has few readers indeed, but, indeed, what readers! with 750 free online full text medical research references -- airheads, space cadets, woo-woos, forget it...me, I'm an exception, of course... ]
Right now they are trying to influence public opinion in Europe,
because the EFSA is supposed to release another investigation into aspartame in September.
The only problem is nothing has changed.
In reality critics all fail to understand that any perceived issue with aspartame reflects the user’s own questionable health.
Here are the facts.
Only methanol amongst aspartame degradation products presents any risk to people — phenylalanine and aspartate are found in greater concentrations in normal foods, like milk and meat.
[ They both are ordinary amino acids, found in every protein, but never in nature as isolated concentrated doses, as in the case with aspartame -- many reputable experts have questioned their safety as neurotoxic "excitotoxins". ]
But risk is dose dependent and the risk from the amount of methanol produced from aspartame degradation is also non-existent.
[ In humans only, concentrations of the ADH1 enzyme inside the cells of many specific tissues (retina, brain, skin follicles) turn highly dilute, mildly toxic methanol in human blood into the same number of formaldehyde molecules, free floating right inside cells, which become hydrated and hence extremely toxic, binding to DNA, RNA, and proteins within the cell, wrecking havoc, causing cell death, sensitizing proteins that then attract white blood cells, which also succumb, forming pus in durable, cumulative micro lesions in an expanding zone of damaged tissue, while the formaldehyde also methylates (bonds) to DNA, shutting down genes and leading to cancers much later, and to birth defects in the fetus (which methanol reaches) -- also, formaldehyde shuts down two vital enzymes in the mitochrondria that provide cells with the energy for all their functions, resulting in blindness in the retina, and fatigue and weakness in muscles. [ While Science Sleeps, WC Monte, 2012 January ]
By the way, methanol/formaldehyde toxicity is the infamous alcohol hangover, “the morning after the night before”, and the more severe alcohol withdrawal syndrome, sometime fatal. So, if you ever get hangovers, be verrrrry careful…
Because of the efforts of scientists all over the world for decades, the USA finally joined the consensus that formaldehyde causes cancers two years ago. But WC Monte is the first to assemble the jigsaw puzzle of evidence that show the key role in humans of the distribution of ADH1 enzyme in humans, the only animal that lacks a catalase system to safely detoxify methanol.
Monte has also documented evidence released in January 2011 that the FDA hid 4 aspartame industry studies about 1975 that showed methanol caused severe birth defects in animals — not conspiracy theory, but fact, Jack. ]
Moreover, just like the methanol found in fruit juice, that released from aspartame is a vital nutrient.
[ Fruits and vegetables indeed convey high levels of methanol, but even higher levels of ethanol, which prevents the ADH1 enzyme from making methanol into formaldehyde. Monte shows that the reason that people who never drink are sicker with many diseases than those who have one drink a day, is that for drinkers there is little production of formaldehyde, unless very high levels of methanol happen from long term wet storage of fruits juices vegetables (tomatoes are the worst) in sealed cans jars and plastic bags, or from fruit brandies, or smoked fermented and spoiled foods. Wood, peat, and cigarette smoke have high methanol levels, responsible for most of the harm from leaky indoor ovens and cigarettes.
say, is that what the derogatory term "fruitcake" comes from? ]
Why? Methanol is oxidized to formaldehyde and formate — both are chemically directly converted by the (tetrahydro) folate vitamin system into very valuable methyl groups.
These methyl groups detoxify the true excitotoxic homocysteine,
protect DNA from strand breakage (by converting break fostering uracil into methyluracil (thymine)),
and when systematically methylated,
methylated DNA acts to prevent errant DNA duplication.
For more on its cycle see the figure at the top of p 3000 here,
http://download.cell.com/AJHG/pdf/PIIS0002929707614001.pdf?intermediate=true .
Formate and formaldehyde are [quoting another] “produced” in the body during the endogenous demethylation of many compounds, including many foods and drugs.
For example, the demethylation of the caffeine found in one cup of coffee produces 30 mg of formaldehyde (Imbus, 1988).
[ A recent study in Brazil found about 50 mg methanol per cup from fresh hot coffee -- there is no published data on all the varieties of coffee -- this could be a huge unknown problem... lotta loose ends in the world methanol damna-drama so far... ]
Formaldehyde is essential in one-carbon pool intermediary metabolism.
The metabolite of formaldehyde, formic acid, is a substrate for purine nucleotide synthesis (Sheehan and Tully, 1983).
It can be calculated that more than 50,000 mg [that's 50 g] of formaldehyde is produced and metabolized in an adult human body daily and that an adult human liver will metabolize 22 mg of formaldehyde per minute (Clary and Sullivan, 1999).
[ but the free floating formaldehyde formed from methanol inside human cells is as active as a hawk in a cage full of mice... the brief game is:
hawk 100 mice 0 ]
Consequently, it is quite clear that the formaldehyde from aspartame provides a trivial contribution to total formaldehyde exposure and metabolism in the body. (p 18 in and refs from http://www.fte.ugent.be/vlaz/Magnuson2007.pdf ).
[ This is an industry paid and staffed PR exercise on a grand scale, pious and unctuous, an excellent example of the extremely adroit, long-term effective strategy by huge vested interests, in communist as well as capitalist societies, to divert attention from the true nature of methanol toxicity. ]
Do these facts not make clear that any encountered problem arises not from the aspartame, methanol, formaldehyde or even formate, but from personal metabolism issues in detoxifying these otherwise critical precursors to valuable methyl groups?
These issues with folate (and the related B12 or homocysteine) are potentially numerous.
Many people are deficient in folate or B12.
Forty percent of some populations have folate polymorphisms, see
http://download.cell.com/AJHG/pdf/PIIS0002929707614001.pdf?intermediate=true
All adverse side effects ever claimed from aspartame are really due to these personal folate-related issues, not to this sweetener.
And that probably includes oft-reported migraines (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11121176 ) too.
And that is my real point: in people with these personal issues, these adverse risks exist whether one uses aspartame or not.
[ John, my friend, you've just said that "potentially numerous", "many", "forty percent of some populations", personal metabolism issues", and
" personal folate-related issues" are at risk from methanol -- shouldn't the public be alerted at once, and action taken to protect huge numbers of people, vulnerable to otherwise suffer, be born with birth defects, have mental disfunctions, become incompetent, with huge costs to everyone -- so speak out now to prevent all methanol exposure! ]
Widespread overindulgence in ethanol (acetaldehyde is an inhibitor of the folate reactions) only exacerbates these risks, just as it exacerbates breast and other cancers and contributes to fetal alcohol syndrome.
[ this may be useful: folate deficiency operates to cause problems from heavy ethanol use, not light use -- again, research on the actual disposition of ethanol and methanol metabolites in specific tissues over long periods of time in humans is as lacking as critical for public health.
Now as to this ridiculous post, Martini has been restating these same old worn out arguments (note most predate even 1990) for twenty years.
And time after time experiments have refuted every argument at considerable cost and waste to the taxpayers.
Aspartame is the most studied substance known and no relevant western nation even questions its safety any longer.
[ so, eastern nations are backward...? really? or less under the thumb of industry...? -- and the recent Scandinavian study on preterm birth specifically cited methanol as the responsible part of aspartame... ]
The people she cites likely don’t even know what folate is, why it is relevant to aspartame metabolism, much have ever even considered it an issue.
Critics like Roberts have never checked their “aspartame responders” for folate issues.
In one case Roberts claimed aspartame caused thrombocytopenia, yet there are over 100 citations to that associated with folate deficiency alone.
Let’s consider some of her latest nonsense above.
Martini cites ‘Diana Dow Edwards’ as associating aspartame with birth defects.
Well it isn’t and never was aspartame; it is folate deficiency in the subjects, be it animal (from deficient food) or humans, who became so deficient that folate fortification of grain products was mandated in 1998 to prevent serious birth defects in infants of deficient mothers.
That date is relevant also because since that date nothing of relevance has been published about aspartame that stands any test warranting further EFSA or FDA consideration.
Take a look at her blog in that light.
She claims Wurtman speaks about aspartame no more.
Perhaps that is because he coauthored a paper in 1998 refuting his own work, concluding that “large daily doses of aspartame had no effect on neuropsychologic, neurophysiologic, or behavioral functioning in healthy young adults” ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9734727 ).
[ A series of exposes by UPI reporter Gregory Gordon said that Wurtman was threatened with funding cutoff by the industry if he continued his opposition -- his name was not on the list of authors on the final published report of a very deficient study on aspartame safety at MIT on healthy young students. ]
Olney knows better than to speak out on this issue:
his animals had folate issues that were rather embarrassing.
I would comment on the work of Dr. Michael Baret, if that work was even abstracted by the US National Library of Medicine.
Citing such a finding may be more hearsay.
On the other hand the result reported could be true, if the children involved were malnourished and vitamin deficient.
Oops, that might well be the case, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20810820 .
And then that might explain his results, so also why they were not abstracted.
Aspartame will again be judged completely safe in September when EFSA revisits the issue, because there are still no published papers claiming any safety issue with aspartame that cannot be completely explained by improper controls, often performed without any understanding of the extreme relevance of folate status to the issues they cite as meaningful markers
( Collison et al, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22697049 ;
Alleva et al, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20837131
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22509243 ).
Consider in antithesis to Collison et al these points:
learning and folate provides 235 references,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Learning%2Cfolate ,
the effects of folate on the metabolic syndrome provide 162 references,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=folate%2Cmetabolic%20syndrome%20 ,
and even insulin tolerance test and folate provide 32 references,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Insulin%20Tolerance%20Test%2Cfolate .
And in antithesis to Alleva et al the following links to PubMed afford many examples of folate (deficiency) connections with angiogenesis, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=folate%2Cangiogenesis .
Homocysteine also has bad effects on angiogenesis too,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=homocysteine%2Cangiogenesis .
From these lists two papers cited below make clear that this Alleva et al paper is also entirely irrelevant for aspartame risk assessment, because they failed to properly control their experiment to discount known fo late and/or homocysteine alternative explanations:
Homocysteine-impaired angiogenesis is associated with VEGF/VEGFR inhibition,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22652658
The effects of homocysteine and folic acid on angiogenesis and VEGF expression during chicken vascular development, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22085786
My take home message is that aspartame is perfectly safe used as directed and has been judged so by all the world’s relevant health authorities for nearly 30 years.
The arguments cited here are completely discounted by risk analysis scientists worldwide.
[ and yet research critical of aspartame and methanol keeps showing up from all over the world every month... well, a sucker is born every minute... ]
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)