If government officials have to choose between their bank account and our health, they will choose their bank accounts. Let us not be fooled.

As you said, we can’t know for sure who is telling the truth on the aspartame issue, but we should be smart enough to look at other things that our government agencies consider to be safe and draw our conclusion that we can’t trust our own government. Sad, I know.

If you email me back and ask for the information I have, I can show you a chart that significantly matches Autism rates with Aspartame use rate. Europe has banned the use of Aspartame for pregnant and nursing women as well as children. The countries where Aspartame has been banned or never accepted, their Autism rate is only a small fraction of the U.S. rate. Since Aspartame has been approved in 1981, and placed in soft drinks in 1986, the Autism rate has skyrocketed. The Aspartame notes page explains just a few studies on how Aspartame has been linked with brain disorders.

Some Main Points:

Dr. Olney warned of the damage that this product would do to the unborn and to children. He said that the FDA acknowledged “aspartame had been shown to induce brain damage in neonatal animals” but FDA dismissed the neurotoxicity as irrelevant on grounds that the approved uses of aspartame don’t include feeding it to newborn humans. Yet aspartame can be found in prescription and over-the-counter pediatric drugs and in pediatric vitamins. Nursing babies receive this poison from mothers who breastfeed. The recent plague of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), autism, and birth defects manifest the neurologic devastations of aspartame. Supporting this view, Dr. Louis Elsas, Emory Professor of Pediatrics and Genetics, testified in a congressional hearing that aspartame is a teratogen (causes birth defects) and a neurotoxin.

Aspartame is a teratogen that triggers birth defects. It is a deadly neurotoxin (Dr. Louis Elsas testimony before congress, pediatric professor,genetics, Emory, http://www.dorway.com). Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D. says in his book that aspartame triggers ADD and autism.

[ or search Google for aspartameNM, message 1589 ]

Methanol: A Chemical Trojan Horse as the Root of the Inscrutable U
Prepublication Copy; Medical Hypotheses — 06 November 2009

http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(09)00693-8/abstract

Woodrow C. Monte PhD
Professor of Food Science (retired)
Arizona State University
corresponding author : Woodrow C. Monte PhD
470 South Rainbow Drive
Page, Arizona 86040

Key Words:
food epidemiology; diseases of civilization; methanol; formaldehyde;
aspartame; autism; multiple sclerosis; Alzheimer’s; U-shaped curve.

Abstract:

Until 200 years ago, methanol was an extremely rare component of
the human diet and is still rarely consumed in contemporary hunter
and gatherer cultures.

With the invention of canning in the 1800s, canned and bottled
fruits and vegetables, whose methanol content greatly exceeds that
of’ their fresh counterparts, became far more prevalent.

The recent dietary introduction of aspartame, an artificial sweetener,
11% methanol by weight, has also greatly increased methanol
consumption.

Moreover, methanol is a major component of cigarette smoke,
known to be a causative agent of many diseases of civilization
(DOC).

Conversion to formaldehyde in organs other than the liver is
the principal means by which methanol may cause disease.
The known sites of class I alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH I),
the only human enzyme capable of metabolizing methanol to
formaldehyde, correspond to the sites of origin for many DOC.

Variability in sensitivity to exogenous methanol consumption may be
accounted for in part by the presence of aldehyde dehydrogenase
sufficient to reduce the toxic effect of formaldehyde production
in tissue through its conversion to the much less toxic formic acid.

The consumption or endogenous production of small amounts of
ethanol, which acts as a competitive inhibitor of methanol’s
conversion to formaldehyde by ADH I, may afford some individuals
protection from DOC.

[ Folic acid also strongly protects most people from methanol and formaldehyde. ]

Yes, some of these materials can be toxic in the wrong circumstances – concentrations too high, etc. But again that the case in everything in life.

Ultimately you have to decide if you are going to believe the over 200 studies and the regulatory agencies of over 90 countries, the World Health Organization, and many well established independent organizations like the American Medical Association and the American Cancer Society over the hundreds of individual web sites with no established credentials and the anonymous chain mails that circulate the internet.

We have already seen the harm caused by other scare campaigns of this nature – the thimerosal scare leading to the deaths of children from long controlled childhood diseases because of parents scared to vaccinate children, cholera epidemics in South America leading to deaths of thousands because officials were scared to chlorinate drinking water and so on.

The time is long past to walk away from superstition and conspiracy theories and embrace fact and evidence based approaches to improving health.

On another note, thanks for the first educated, well-written, thoughtful article I’ve seen all night. It was a relief to find less idiotic people out there and someone not from either side as well.