Dr - I appreciate your comment, and have decided rather than to leave it as a comment, I would answer it here where it can be addressed head on.

Your comment is as follows:

Why do you keep perpetuating this garbage. Aspartame’s history, even if true, has nothing to do with its twenty year proven safety record. Aspartame is perfectly safe used according to label instructions in healthy people. There is no valid data to the contrary. For a full text complete review inlcuding to question the most recent arguments against aspartame, see http://www.fte.ugent.be/vlaz/Magnuson2007.pdf

John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, and Toxicology)

I read the lengthy report after a bit of research turned up the following, which perked my interest:

According to WebMD, a panel of experts concluded early in September that there are not any health risks associated with consuming aspartame, but the panel was funded by Ajinomoto Company Inc., a manufacturer of aspartame.

“We conclude aspartame is very safe,” panel coordinator Bernadene Magnuson, PhD, assistant professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Maryland, said at a news conference.

But Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D., executive director of the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest, thinks the report is “totally unreliable”.
The panel was convened by a food, dietary supplement and cosmetics consulting firm, the Burdock Group, and was funded by a major maker of aspartame, Ajinomoto Company Inc.

I have to say I concur with Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D.

First of all, many of the reasons cited for invalidating previous research were just plain illogical. In one part of the report it is stated that the studies may be invalid because the food used for the rats in that study may not be what the later researchers consider appropriate. However — if they are feeding the same food to control and to the dosed mice the results of the two groups should be the same if the one added ingredient (in this case aspertame) makes no metabolism changes, that argument is so illogical that it is not even considerable. Many arguments against previous studies go that way.

Also I note that every time the report shows that the product causes illnesses, the research methods are changed and done over. This isn’t much of a surprise considering that the very institutions propagating this product funded the studies.

Another concern - the controlled conditions surrounding the aspertame is questioned by the report several times - and questions were brought to light about the handling of the substance in previous tests. Um…..excuse me…..what control for the preservation, storage, and handling of this substance is there when slammed into our foods? If certain temperatures need to be present to make a product safe, what happens when a kid decides it’s just fine to drink the substance warm instead of chilled? What happens when it is heated in our foods? Our lives are not lived in laboratories and if we need to uses laboratory precautions just to eat, the substance should not be in food. If the product is not stable under ALL conditions, what makes you think we aren’t getting sick from the conditions under which it is kept in our homes and at stores?

The report also claims to be conducted over a few years time - but some of the data that shows a harmful change occurring in physiology is cut off after 12 weeks of study — what happens after that? It’s already been shown that certain factors are increasing after just that amount of time - what happens when you double that time -where’s the rest of that data or was that something that nobody liked the results so they just adjusted the studies again?

What about this report stating that kidneys showed affects of swelling, etc? You think that is okay? It might not be cancer, but from everything I have learned, kidneys that function properly are more than a tad bit conducive to our optimal health.

I could add the same about the finding that the liver can metabolize all the formaldehyde — do you think that overloading a liver is a good idea? We have hundreds, maybe even thousands by this day and age, of toxins entering our bloodstream every day that our liver has to deal with. Overloading a liver can be deadly, so when you say that the liver can handle plenty of that stuff, well guy - maybe it can in a perfectly “safe and sterile” laboratory, but out in the real world, that could be the amount of toxin that throws a person over the edge. Let’s put the crap in MORE of our food and find out how much of it we can assimilate before our livers just shut down completely.

And - BABIES? Who ordered a potentially toxic substance to be experimented with on BABIES? Were they just insignificant little orphans or did Mommy get some money and a T-shirt as they did in Florida during the recent widely publicized spraying of babies with toxic chemicals to see what they did to the kids? Did anyone in this study actually realize they were being studied or was this just more under-cover usage of humans as guinea pigs? And further more — as you stated against previous studies about the mice — what control of environment and food or genetics was involved with the experimentation on these babies? Are they being grown in or kept in a lab somewhere that we haven’t been informed about?
I find it odd that any research crew in any valid study would not question the use of human babies in a study of substance toxicology.

And Finally — what exactly do you mean by HEALTHY people? Does that mean anyone without asthma, diabetes, artheritis, obesity, heart desease, cancer, acne, eczema, kidney disease, ulcers, migranes, or are subject to fluoride in their water — what does HEALTHY mean and how many people in the US do NOT fit that description? Considering the amount of people being regularly dosed by the AMA with one drug or another, I am assuming that a very small percentage of our citizens can be grouped accordingly at the present time. Just another reason that we are attempting to get away from potentially toxic substances - in our water, air, and FOOD.

Then there is the matter that we do not always USE the product straight out of a container of aspertame - it is added to food sources in factories where we have no clue of how it is handled. We have no clue what little factor might set off toxic reactions — is this stuff safe in a microwave? From what I saw of that study, I would presume it is not. So add it to microwavable foods…….GREAT!

You are right Dr. It seems many of us don’t know what is going on with the type of study you have kindly given us the link to - but anyone receiving a little oxygen to their brain can see this study brings up a lot more questions than it answers.