Health Experts Renew Call to Ban Aspartame

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Health experts renew call to ban aspartame

 

05 September, 2009 03:37:00 Kathlyn Stone

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With a new administration, some health experts long opposed to

aspartame use are hoping that the FDA will review evidence against

the sweetener and revoke an approval they say was marred by falsified

testing data and political interference by the Reagan administration.

 

Aspartame, the artificial sweetener used around the world, causes

cancer in lab rats, and should be banned for human consumption, says

Samuel S. Epstein, MD, professor emeritus of environmental and

occupational medicine at the Chicago School of Public Health,

University of Illinois, and chair of the

<http://www.preventcancer.com/>Cancer Prevention Coalition.

 

Epstein warns that the use of aspartame in foods, vitamins and

pharmaceuticals is based on false safety information and political

interference going back to the Reagan administration.

 

First approved by the FDA in 1974, the approval was rescinded after

two studies found that aspartame caused brain tumors in laboratory

animals. It was approved again in 1981, the same year the FDA banned

stevia, a natural sweeter, as unsafe.

 

In January 1976, then FDA Commissioner

<http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CommissionersPage/PastCommissioners/ucm113416.htm>A\

lexander

M. Schmidt, MD, testified before Congress that Hazleton Laboratories,

under contract to Searle, had been charged with falsifying

toxicological data on aspartame.

 

The FDA convened a Public Board of Inquiry to review concerns about

the sweetener's carcinogenic effects in experimental animals. In

1980, the board unanimously concluded that aspartame could

" contribute to the development brain tumors " and should not be

approved pending further study.

 

But then, according to the coalition, the day after Ronald Reagan's

inauguration in January 1981, Searle re-applied to the FDA for

approval to use aspartame as a food sweetener, and Reagan's new FDA

commissioner,

<http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CommissionersPage/PastCommissioners/ucm113329.htm>A\

rthur

Hayes Hull, Jr., MD, appointed a commission to review the Board of

Inquiry's decision. The newly appointed Hull overruled the unanimous

recommendation of the FDA's board of inquiry, paving the way for

re-approval of aspartame.

 

Hull left the FDA amid charges of improper billing for travel

expenses and joined Burston-Marsteller, the public relations firm of

Searle and Monsanto, which purchased Searle in 1985.

 

The coalition is calling upon Hamburg, the new FDA commissioner, to

ban the use of aspartame using provisions of the 1958 Delaney

Amendment, which requires an automatic ban on carcinogenic food additives.

 

Since the initial controversy, numerous studies in the United States

and in Europe have found conflicting evidence supporting and negating

the carcinogenic qualities of aspartame.

 

For further reading:

 

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18085058>A<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubme\

d/18085058>spartame

bioassay findings portend human cancer hazards, Int J Occup Environ

Health. 2007 Oct-Dec;13(4):446-8.

 

<http://journals.lww.com/jneuropath/Abstract/1996/11000/Increasing_Brain_Tumor_R\

ates__Is_There_a_Link_to.2.aspx>Increasing

Brain Tumor Rates: Is There a Link to Aspartame? Oney, John W.;

Farber, Nuri B.; Spitznagel, Edward; Robins, Lee N. Journal of

Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology. 55(11):1115-1123, November 1996.

 

<http://journals.lww.com/jneuropath/Abstract/1996/11000/Increasing_Brain_Tumor_R\

ates__Is_There_a_Link_to.2.aspx>Artific<http://journals.lww.com/jneuropath/Abstr\

act/1996/11000/Increasing_Brain_Tumor_Rates__Is_There_a_Link_to.2.aspx>ial

Sweeteners and Cancer, National Cancer Institute website

 

Flesh & Stone

Last run on 9/4/2009

______________________________

 

More information on aspartame on www.mpwhi.com, www.dorway.com and

www.wnho.net Aspartame Toxicity Center, www.holisticmed.com/aspartame

 

Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum, Founder

Mission Possible International

9270 River Club Parkway

Duluth, Georgia 30097

770 242-2599