New Mexico Pediatrician regales Hawaii Legislative Committee with Dangers of Aspartame/Methanol

Feb. 6, 2008 - PRLog -- Dear Chairman Dr. Josh Green and Honorable Members of the House Health Committee:

I am a board certified physician in both pediatric and Hyperbaric medicine. I was a student of Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr, the FDA Commissioner responsible for approving the toxin aspartame to be used in the USA.

I know your time is valuable, so in one sentence I will tell you that aspartame has a long well documented legacy showing it is both a neurotoxin and carcinogen that should never, ever have been approved to be fit for human consumption. I strongly encourage you to vote to have this substance banned from your shores.

What follows is a detailed and technical explanation of just how toxic aspartame is. Dr. Green will understand this, I ask the rest of the Health Committee to do the right thing, and give it a Do-Pass Friday. Please.

Thank you in advance

K Paul Stoller, MD
President International Hyperbaric Medical Association
Medical Director, Hyperbaric Med Ctr New Mexico
Medical Director, Hyperbaric Oxygen Clinic Sacramento
404 Brunn School Rd #D, Santa Fe, NM 87505

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In October 1980 the Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) impaneled by the FDA to evaluate aspartame safety found that the chemical caused an unacceptable level of brain tumors in animal testing. Based on this fact, the PBOI ruled that aspartame should not be added to the food supply.

This ruling culminated 15 years of regulatory ineptitude, chicanery and deception by the FDA and the Searle drug company, aspartame's discoverer and manufacturer (acquired by Monsanto in 1985), and then started the ball rolling on two additional decades of maneuvering, manipulating and dissembling by FDA, Searle and Monsanto.

In 1965, a Searle scientist licked some of a new ulcer drug from his fingers and discovered the sweet taste of aspartame. Searle’s early tests showed that aspartame produced microscopic holes and tumors in the brains of experimental mice, epileptic seizures in monkeys, and was converted into formaldehyde.

In 1974 the FDA approved aspartame as a dry-foods additive. The renowned brain researcher, John Olney from Washington University in St. Louis reviewed the available data and discovered two studies showing brain tumors in rats and petitioned the FDA for a public hearing. Dr. Olney had already shown that aspartic acid (part of the aspartame molecule) caused holes in the brains of rats. Aspartame also is one part phenylalanine, and one part methyl (or wood) alcohol.

The FDA prevailed on Searle to refrain from marketing aspartame until after completion of the hearing.  In 1975, an FDA Special Commissioner's Task Force reported serious problems with Searle’s research that was conducted in a manner so flawed as to raise doubts about aspartame safety and create the possibility of serious criminal intent. The FDA asked the U.S. Attorney for Chicago to seek a grand jury review of the monkey seizure study, but he let the statute of limitations run out, then (along with two aides) proceeded to join Searle's law firm.

In October 1980, the PBOI blocked aspartame marketing until the tumor studies could be explained, and unless the commissioner overruled the board, the matter was closed. In November 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President and Donald Rumsfeld, president of Searle, joined the Reagan White House. In January 1981 Rumsfeld told a sales meeting that he would call in his chips and get aspartame approved Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr. a pharmacologist and Defense Department contract researcher became FDA commissioner and his first decision was to defy FDA advisers and approved aspartame for dry foods. His last decision, before leaving his post because of improprieties was to approve aspartame for soft drinks in 1983. He immediately became senior medical adviser to Searle’s public relations firm for $1000/day. Rumsfeld received a $12 million bonus.

As soon as soft drinks with Nutrasweet began to be consumed, complaints began to arrive at the FDA: dizziness, blurred vision, headaches, and seizures. The complaints were more serious than the FDA has ever received on any food additive. In 1985, the FDA asked the Centers fo Disease Control (CDC) to review the first 650 complaints (there are now tens-of-thousands). CDC found that the symptoms in ~25% of cases stopped and then restarted with discontinuing the use of aspartame and then restarting its use. The day the FDA released the CDC report, which they discounted, Pepsi Cola announced its switch to aspartame with a worldwide media blitz.

At the same time, human brain tumors rose 10% and previously benign tumors turned virulent. An FDA's deputy commissioner said the data posed no problem; he then became VP of clinical research for Searle.

Four hundred aspartame studies were done between 1985 and 1995. All the studies Searle paid for found no problem, but 100% of the studies paid for be non-industry sources raised questions.

The manifestations of aspartame disease in young children are myriad. They include severe headache, convulsions, unexplained visual loss, rashes, asthma, gastrointestinal problems, obesity, marked weight loss, hypoglycemia, diabetes, addiction (probably largely due to the methyl alcohol), hyperthyroidism, and a host of neuropsychiatric features.) The latter include extreme fatigue, irritability, hyperactivity, depression, antisocial behavior (including suicide), poor school performance, the deterioration of intelligence, and brain tumors.

An average aspartame-sweetened beverage would have a conservative aspartame content of about 555 mg/liter, and therefore, a methanol equivalent of 56 mg/liter (56 ppm). For example, if a 25 kg child consumed on a warm day, after exercising, two-thirds of a two-liter bottle of soft drink sweetened with aspartame, that child would be consuming over 732 mg of aspartame (29 mg/kg). This alone exceeds what the FDA considers the 99+-percentile daily consumption level of aspartame. The child would also absorb over 70mg of methanol from that soft drink. This is almost ten times the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended daily limit of consumption for methanol.

To look at the issue from another perspective, the literature reveals death from consumption of the equivalent of 6 gm of methanol. It would take 200 12 oz. cans of soda to yield the lethal equivalent of 6 gm of methanol. According to FDA regulations, compounds added to foods that are found to cause some adverse health effect at a particular usage level are actually permitted in foods only at much lower levels. The FDA has established these requirements so that an adequate margin of safety exists to protect particularly sensitive people and heavy consumers of the chemical. Section 170.22 of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations mandates that this margin of safety by 100-fold below the "highest no-effect" level. If death has been caused by the methanol equivalent of 200 12 oz. cans of aspartame sweetened soda, one hundredth of that level would be two cans of soda. The relationship of the lethal dose to the "highest no effect" level has tragically not been determined for methanol but assuming very conservatively that the level is one hundreth of the lethal dose, the FDA regulations should have limited consumption to approximately 24 ounces of aspartame-sweetened soft drink per day.

The high ethanol/methanol ratio of alcoholic beverages must have a very significant protective effect given that ethanol antidotes methanol, so don't let the argument that methanol already exists in alcoholic beverages without untoward effects. This is absurd given that alcoholics have a much higher incidence of cancer and other degenerative diseases, none of which can be attributed to ethanol alone. In aspartame, the methanol is released, once in the body, unfettered by ethanol to be a pure poison.