A Poison By Any Other Name

I researched aspartame after my own experience. Not only did I occasionally have various nervous spells, which at that time I did not think at all related to drinking diet Cokes, but I kept gaining weight even though I watched my food intake AND exercised.

In the late 90's I gave up diet drinks and lost 20 pounds. Then I started drinking them again and over the next 5 years I picked up 25 pounds. I hit 200 pounds last July and decided enough was enough. So I gave up all meat (beef, chicken, pork) all fried foods and snacks AND all diet drinks, all aspartame.

I lost 35 pounds since last August 1. I know I can't isolate the elimination of aspartame as the key reason for this weight loss, BUT I was not eating all that much meat or fried foods anyway. Also, I have had NONE of those nervous-type feelings that I used to while drinking diets.

This article is a synopsis of hundreds of pages--out of THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS out there. I have no doubt from my own experience and this history that this is a substance that should never have been allowed in our foods or beverages. Rfd

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A POISON BY ANY OTHER NAME

Would you take poison if it had a healthy sounding name, came in trusted products and had a “good housekeeping” type seal of approval? You’re doing just that if you use Nutrasweet, Equal or any of the thousands of famous products containing Aspartame.

Years of research and thousands of complaints filed with the FDA bear witness to the horrors of Aspartame. It causes brain tumors, psychiatric and behavioral disorders, memory loss, depression, headaches, rashes, asthma, seizures, insulin-resistant diabetes, blindness and obesity.

And a just-released report in the European Journal of Clinical Oncology proves Aspartame causes leukemia and lymphoma in rats. The report concludes with a call “…for urgent re-examination of permissible exposure levels of Aspartame in both food and beverages, especially to protect children.”

Renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock M.D. said, "The new study should terrify mothers and all those consuming aspartame sweetened products. Both of these malignancies have increased significantly in this country since the widespread use of aspartame.”

Dieters hoping to lose weight are perversely GAINING it instead. Aspartame affects metabolism so we don’t burn off calories that end up being stored as fat. It also lowers the brain’s output of serotonin, the substance that causes us to feel “full” after eating, thus we eat even more.

The late Dr. M. Adrian Gross, former senior FDA toxicologist, stated in his testimony before Congress, "Beyond a shadow of a doubt, aspartame triggers brain tumors" and, "therefore, by allowing aspartame to be placed on the market, the FDA has violated the Delaney Amendment… And if the FDA violates its own law, who is left to protect the public?"

Aspartame’s approval is the tragic, but all to common sacrifice of our greater public interest to profit, power and greed. In textbook style it shows the corruption from within by self-interested politicians and their corporate masters that continues to this very day.

It started in 1965 when Searle developed Aspartame as an ulcer drug. A Searle scientist discovered its sweet taste after licking it from his finger. Searle foresaw the much bigger profits to be made by using this new chemical as a food additive sweetener than the more limited use as an ulcer drug.

Searle’s own initial tests showed Aspartame produced holes and tumors in the brains of mice, epileptic seizures in monkeys and converted by animals into dangerous substances, including formaldehyde. But Searle falsified their test results and disposed of the most damaging evidence.


The FDA pursued criminal charges against Searle for this flagrant violation. But the government’s prosecutors, Samuel Skinner and William Conlon, failed to bring it to the grand jury. In typical revolving door fashion, the foot dragging prosecutors then joined the law firm defending Searle.

But even accepting Searle’s doctored results as presented, Dr. Gross said, “… it still emerges that the rate of brain tumors amongst the animals exposed to it (aspartame) vastly exceeds that for animals not exposed to it and such excess is very highly significant. What this says is that there cannot be any reasonable, or even shadow of a doubt that aspartame had caused such an increase in the incidence of brain tumors.”

So the FDA refused to approve Aspartame throughout the Ford and Carter Administrations. But two significant events happened. First, Donald Rumsfeld became president of Searle in 1977 with the express goal of getting Nutrasweet on the market.

Then Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980. Rumsfeld joined the Reagan transition team. The second day upon taking office Reagan, by executive order, suspended all action of the FDA. One month later he appointed Arthur Hayes as the new Chairman.

Just five months later Hayes overruled FDA advisors and approved aspartame for dry foods. In November 1983 he approved it for beverages. Hayes, under fire for accepting corporate gifts, left the FDA that same month and joined Searle’s public relations firm. Rumsfeld eventually got a $12 million bonus. And the complaints started pouring in.

Within a year of Aspartame’s test marketing release, over 10,000 complaints of dizziness, blurred vision, headaches, and seizures hit the FDA. The Centers for Disease Control found that the symptoms in approximately 25% of the complainants had stopped and then restarted in a corresponding manner with aspartame consumption and withdrawal.

In this same period the human incidence of brain tumors had soared by 10%. None of this bothered the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner, who left the FDA two years later to become vice-president of clinical research for Searle.

That would explain why 100% of all the Searle-financed studies from 1985 to 1995 found no problem with Nutrasweet, while 100% of non-industry financed research raised questions.

Most damning is the soft drink industry’s own statement to Congress in 1983 opposing Aspartame. The National Soft Drink Association petition to Congress against the approval of aspartame was published in the May 7, 1985, Congressional Record: "Searle has not met its burdens under section 409 . . . to demonstrate that aspartame is safe and functional for use in soft drinks . . .. The extensive deficiencies in the stability studies conducted by Searle to demonstrate that aspartame and its degradation products [methyl alcohol, formaldehyde, formic acid, diketopiperazine, etc] are safe in soft drinks intended to be sold in the United States, render these studies inadequate and unreliable. "

So why would they later embrace as a sweetener that which they earlier correctly labeled a toxic poison? And why would Commissioner Hayes unilaterally overrule longstanding FDA opposition and approve the identical Aspartame formula that had been rejected under three previous administrations?

Profit, power and greed. And it’s happening again with Splenda, which is nothing more than chlorinated sugar. Biochemist Dr. James Bowen explains that "Just like aspartame…sucralose also failed in clinical trials with animals.” It affects metabolism and leads to organ damage.

This frequent and open sell-out of our welfare to big money is destroying our faith in government and eroding our democracy. It will only stop when we insist on leaders who make paramount the greater public interest.

Some call this corruption “free market capitalism.” But like “Nutrasweet” it is a label that can’t hide the poison beneath.


Respectfully submitted, Richard F. Dawahare 7/20/05