I don't know if people saw this one already, since the results were released last Summer. But the NY Times reports on a SEVEN YEAR study on Aspartame by Dr. Morando Soffritti, a cancer researcher in Bologna, Italy.
The article is here: http://www.nytimes.c...article_popular
The full study is here: http://ehp.niehs.nih...1/abstract.html
And here are some snips from the article...
No wonder we never get the truth! Who the hell is going to spend a million bucks to do the right thing?
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.
DR. SOFFRITTI, who oversees 180 scientists and researchers in 30 countries who collaborate on toxin research
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.
And you thought the new Splenda based Diet Coke formula was just Coca Cola giving you variety...
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 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.
Oh man--great article--huge parts on the double dealings at the FDA--here's a brief snip...
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.
And for those that like to quote "numerous studies have shown it's safe"
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."
He said that an excess of phenyalanine could upset the body's balance of neurotransmitters, causing a range of neurological symptoms.
"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."
And this next one sums it up for me as well...until they figure it out, I tell everyone I know to avoid the stuff...Why some defend it is beyond reason to me. The best you can say is "I dunno" and shrug your shoulders.
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"
Edited by kevink, 14 February 2006 - 03:52 AM.
