LETTER TO CYNTHIA OSHITA -
OFFICE OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH HAZARD ASSESSMENT


Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum.
Mission Possible World Health International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
Telephone: 770-242-2599
E-Mail: BettyM19@mindspring.com



Posted: 18 March 2009


Cynthia Oshita
Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment
Proposition 65 Implementation
P.O. Box 4010 1001 I Street, 19th floor
Sacramento, California 95812-4010
FAX (916) 323-8803

Dear Ms. Oshita:

In reading available information, I assume you want mostly how aspartame relates to cancer. Indeed it is a carcinogen, proven so by many scientific studies. Aspartame also triggers many other serious diseases which fill the 1,000+ page medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, http://www.sunsentpress.com by H. J. Roberts, M.D. When FDA Commissioner Dr. Von Eschenbach took office I wrote him about aspartame and cancer, mainly due to his professed intention to save cancer victims; so much of this has already been done. http://www.mpwhi.com/project_recall_aspartame.htm Later 12 toxicologists asked the FDA to ban aspartame because of the long term Ramazzini studies on large rat populations showing aspartame is "a multipotential carcinogen". http://www.cspinet.org/new/pdf/aspartame_letter_to_fda.pdf

Now I'll go back to the beginning.

Aspartame was not approved by science but thru the political chicanery of Don Rumsfeld. D.C. Attorney James Turner, explains how Rumsfeld did it in the documentary Sweet Misery, a Poisoned World. Here's a clip from the movie so you can hear what he said: http://www.soundandfury.tv/pages/rumsfeld2.html

Searle's problem was they couldn't get studies to show safety. For example, in the Bressler Report: http://www.mpwhi.com/aspartame_news.htm you read where they would excise brain tumors from the rats, put them back in the study and after they died resurrected them back on paper. They even filtered out neoplasms to hide them from the FDA. Repeatedly Searle was caught in this criminal activity.

On January 10, 1977 in a 33 page letter, FDA Chief Counsel Richard Merrill recommended to the Justice Department Attorney Sam Skinner that a grand jury investigate Searle for "apparent violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 21 USC 331 (e), and the False Reports to the Government Act, 18 U.S.C. 1001, for "their willful and knowing failure to make reports to the Food and Drug Administration required by the Act, 21 U.S.C 355 (i) and making false statements in reports of animal studies conducted to establish the safety of aspartame." The FDA called special attention to studies investigating the effect of NutraSweet on monkeys and hamsters.

Searle was caught dead to rights, so they hired Skinner, made him a deal he couldn't refuse. So the former Justice Department prosecutor became a defender. Next at bat as U. S. Prosecutor was William Conlon, who promptly switched sides too. By then the statute of limitations had expired. Searle knew they couldn't win the case so they simply hired the prosecutors. The Godfather hired the District Attorneys!

Nevertheless the FDA had no intention of approving aspartame. The fraud was so great that Dr. John Olney (who with James Turner fought against approval of aspartame ) told Searle to do studies in his lab so he could see that they were done honestly, with supervision. Dr. Olney believed the FDA wouldn't approve aspartame because the studies showed it produced brain damaged. What he didn't anticipate is that Searle didn't submit these findings to the FDA.

January 30, 1980 the Public Board of Inquiry revoked Searle's petition for approval declaring that they had "not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive." Searle had spent $17 million on an aspartame factory and had no intention of giving up, poison or no. At this point they hired Donald Rumsfeld who said he would call in his markers and get it approved anyway. What were those markers? President Reagan had told Rumsfeld he would be nominated for vice president, but instead selected Bush number 1.

The day after Reagan took office he appointed Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes as the new FDA Commissioner, to over-rule the Board of Inquiry. Reagan knew it would take 30 days to get Hayes to the FDA , so he wrote an Executive Order making the FDA powerless to do anything about aspartame. At 3 AM that night a member of Reagan's staff called the FDA Commissioner Jere Goyan and fired him. Here is a letter from his wife who was there when the terminating call came in: http://www.mpwhi.com/letter_about_jere_goyan.pdf

Once aspartame was on the market there was outrage as consumers were diagnosed with seizures, multiple sclerosis and blindness from the free methyl alcohol releases. Senator Orrin Hatch, on Monsanto's payroll, obstructed hearings on aspartame for years, but there were 3 Congressional hearings from 1985 to l987. Hatch was on Monsanto's payroll, and kept the bill in committee that would put a moratorium on aspartame until NIH completed independent studies on the flood of aspartame problems they were seeing: seizures, blindness, headaches, sexual dysfunction, behavioral problems, especially in children, drug interactions and birth defects.

About that time Dr. James Bowen wrote FDA that "aspartame is mass poisoning of the American public and 70 countries" - today over 100. http://www.dorway.com/drbowen.txt The good doctor wrote: "For this reason, I am opposed to labeling aspartame content of food and drinks. To do so would imply that the government is taking some sort of responsible action....when the only responsible action would be to immediately take aspartame off the market, fully disclose its toxicities, offer full compensation to the injured, public and criminally prosecute anyone who participated in the fraudulent placement of aspartame on the marketplace."

How was the new FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hayes, get rewarded for over-ruling the Board of Inquiry? He was hired as a consultant to NutraSweet's PR Agency on a 10-year contract at $1,000.00 a day, and nobody's heard a peep from him since, he got lockjaw. Who ever heard of a PR guy who won't talk?

Now they began funding professional organizations ladies-of-the-evening like the American Diabetes Assn, American Dietetic Assn and numerous others to propagandize the public with touting asparshame. Of course they also threatened scientists whose studies identified the toxicity of this poison. In the UPI Investigation Dr. Wurtman was threatened if he did studies on aspartame and seizures he would lose his funding. He capitulated. Read this report on the 8 month investigation by United Press International: http://www.mpwhi.com/upi_1987_aspartame_report.pdf Dr. Wurtman, too, got a terrible case of aspartame lockjaw, but MIT still gets the money.

ILSI, the International Life Sciences Institute, was born in 1978 as a "research" front for our favorite poisoners. It's board members are from Coke, Pepsi, Searle, Monsanto and the rest of the usual suspects. If a university won't play their way the get no pay, that is to say, funding for fake "research".

Over the years many independent studies have been done. The manufacturers say 200 studies that aspartame is safe as rain. Some of those were the ones FDA found fraudulent and sought prosecution for, and others were simply bought and paid for quack studies from rubber duck labs.

Consider seizure studies by Monsanto, they bought Searle in l985: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/abuse/seizures.html Seizures are listed 5 times on the FDA report of 92 symptoms that range from male sexual dysfunction to death: http://www.mpwhi.com/92_aspartame_symptoms.pdf People are having so many seizures and going blind on aspartame that the Community Nutrition Institute filed a petition to ban aspartame in l986. Again the manufacturers put in the fix to prevent it from being banned. They were so worried someone would have a seizure they actually gave people anti-seizure medication in the Rowan study.'

Another impeccable "study" involved one-day consumption of, believe it or not: a single capsule of aspartame. Tantamount to smelling the bottle. The got it peer reviewed with their power. So when consumers complain of seizures they say "we did studies and aspartame doesn't cause seizures".

I smoked a Lucky once and I'm fine, so nicotine doesn't cause cancer!

They have all bases covered. Today front groups like Calorie Control Council, with full knowledge that aspartame causes birth defects and mental retardation actually push the poison: http://www.wnho.net/mh_aspartame_letter.htm

When 60 Minutes did a story about aspartame and brain tumors the manufactures claimed to have all these studies showing safety. Dr. Ralph Walton who was on the show decided to research who funded the "studies": http://www.dorway.com/peerrev.html Note that 92% of independent peer-reviewed studies show problems aspartame causes, while those funded or controlled by industry all say it's safe. If you eliminate 6 studies the FDA, aspartame's branch office in Washington, messed with, and one pro-aspartame sponsored summary, 100% of independent scientific peer reviewed studies show aspartame problems.

As Dr. Bowen said: this is mass poisoning of the world. Aspartame destroys the brain, the optic nerve, the immune system and central nervous system. It devastates every organ of the body. Epidemic obesity, diabetes, sexual dysfunction, retinopathy and neuropathy, optic nerve destruction, convulsions and insulin reactions, MS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, IQ depreciation and dozens of other afflictions have been inflicted upon us by this deadly neurotoxic carcinogenic "sweetener".

According to the prestigious Ecologist, aspartame was listed with the pentagon in an inventory of prospective biochemical warfare weapons submitted to Congress. http://www.mpwhi.com/ecologist_september_2005.pdf

Studies show the horrific damage done to the body. For instance, the Trocho Study shows the formaldehyde converted from the free methyl alcohol actually embalms tissue and damages DNA. http://www.mpwhi.com/formaldehyde_from_aspartame.pdf

Here are summaries of the two aspartame studies, Ramazzini, that showed aspartame to be a multipotential carcinogen, passed down through the mother:

DR. MORANDO SOFFRITTI, lead researcher on two groundbreaking long-term aspartame studies. He was recently honored at New York's Mt Sinai School of Medicine with the Irving J Selikoff Award For his outstanding contributions to the identification of environmental and industrial carcinogens and his promotion of independent scientific research. Reviewing his two impeccable aspartame studies. Dr. Soffritti explains:

The first ERF study (2005) was conducted on 1800 Sprague-Dawley rats (100-150/per sex/per group) In order to simulate daily human intake, aspartame was added to the standard rat diet in quantities of 5000, 2500, 100, 500, 20, 4, and 0 mg/Kg of body weight. Treatment of the animals began at 8 weeks of age and continued until spontaneous death. The results show that APM causes a statistically significant, dose-related increase of lymphomas/leukemias and malignant tumors of the renal pelvis in females and malignant tumors of peripheral nerves in males. These results demonstrate for the first time that APM is a carcinogenic agent, capable of inducing malignancies at various dose levels, including those lower than the current acceptable daily intake (ADI) for humans (50 mg/kg of body weight in the US, 40 mg/kg of body weight in the EU).

The second ERF study (2007) was conducted on 400 Sprague-Dawley rats (70-95/per sex/per group). In order to simulate daily human intake, aspartame was added to the standard rat diet in quantities of 100, 20, and 0 mg/Kg of body weight. Treatment of the animals began on the 12th day of fetal life until natural death. The results of the second study show an increased incidence of lymphomas/leukemias in female rats with respect to the first study. Moreover, the study shows that when lifespan exposure to APM begins during fetal life, the age at which lymphomas/leukemias develop in females is anticipated. For the first time, a statistically significant increase in mammary cancers in females was also observed in the second study. The results of this transplacental carcinogenicity bioassay not only confirm, but also reinforce the first experimental demonstration of APMs multipotential carcinogenicity.

Over six years ago I petitioned the FDA to ban aspartame. The FDA has 180 days to answer it. They refuse, obviously because I'm using their own words, and they don't know how to get around the fact that everything is a matter of record. If it wasn't so criminal one would have to laugh at their propaganda - the idea that someone might even consider believing them. For instance, they will tell you there is just a small amount of methanol, and there is more in oranges. What they don't say is that in oranges that it is accompanied by ethanol which is the classic antidote for methanol toxicity and takes it out of your body safely. Here is a peer reviewed journal article about it. http://www.mpwhi.com/aspartame_methanol_and_public_health.pdf Methanol also binds to pectin. In aspartame there is no ethanol. Here is their basic propaganda answered with references: http://dorway.com/dorwblog/?page_id=606

A detox formula for aspartame victims endorsed by Dr. Russell Blaylock, Neurosurgeon: http://www.wnho.net.wtdaspartame.htm Available are his excellent books and a CD: "The Truth About Aspartame"

There are efforts now in states and countries to rid the planet of aspartame. It is genetically engineered. The manufacturers are get people in high places addicted. When I testified to the Senate in New Mexico, half the senators were sipping Diet Coke. Presidents Clinton and Bush were addicted. Methanol is classified as a narcotic, it causes chronic methanol poisoning. This effects the dopamine system of the brain producing addiction.

I've lectured in other countries and I can tell you people are sick and dying the world over on this poison. It would be great to see it banned from California. First of all it's illegally on the market because it violates the Delaney Amendment. Here are comments from an FDA toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, to Congress on 8/1/85:

Dr. Gross testified that at least one of Searle's studies "has established beyond ANY REASONABLE DOUBT that aspartame is capable of inducing brain tumors in experimental animals and that this predisposition of it is of extremely high significance. ... In view of these indications that the cancer causing potential of aspartame is a matter that had been established WAY BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT, one can ask: What is the reason for the apparent refusal by the FDA to invoke for this food additive the so-called Delaney Amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act?"

The Delaney Amendment makes it illegal to allow any residues of cancer causing chemicals in foods. In his concluding testimony Gross asked, "Given the cancer causing potential of aspartame how would the FDA justify its position that it views a certain amount of aspartame as constituting an allowable daily intake or 'safe' level of it? Is that position in effect not equivalent to setting a 'tolerance' for this food additive and thus a violation of that law? And if the FDA itself elects to violate the law, who is left to protect the health of the public?" Congressional Record SID835:131 (August 1, l985)

Here is my letter to the Assembly Committee on Health which exposes the fact that it's adulterated: http://www.mpwhi.com/letter_to_a_n_kim_california_ach.htm The adulteration means it violates interstate commerce laws.

Consumer power is winning the war against this toxin. Holland Sweetener, the largest European aspartame producer closed in 2006. Another European maker also quit. In Japan Tosh stopped making it as well. Merisant, in the USA went bankrupt for $230,000,000 in January 2009. 47 members of Parliament signed for a ban in the UK. There is continuing effort to get banned in the Philippines. Romania banned it in the early 90's because it's carcinogenic. And now the European Food Safety Authority is doing a review.

Today no drug is safe if the consumer is using aspartame because of the interaction due to damage to the mitochondria. It's used in hospitals because of the dietitians making patients even sicker.

The Nutratanic hit the iceberg and Coke & Pepsi are in the lifeboats with new sweeteners in the works. Japan's Ajinomoto and the USA NutraSweet Co are still slapping around in the frigid waters of consumer condemnation. http://www.wnho.net/recipe_for_death.htm

If I can provide further data I'll gladly do so. There is no way to show safety on aspartame with honest, unbiased studies. Eliminate industry studies to defend its product and you'll see how deadly is this toxin. Dr. Bill Deagle said its more deadly than depleted uranium because its ubiquitous in our food.

Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum.
Founder, Mission Possible World Health International (warning the world off aspartame)
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770-242-2599
E-Mail: BettyM19@mindspring.com
http://www.wpwhi.com
http://www.wnho.net
http://www.dorway.com

Aspartame Toxicity Center: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame