Dr. James Bowen told the FDA: ... Every known metabolite of aspartame is of marked or questionable toxicity and patently unsafe for human use. Methyl alcohol is metabolized to nascent formaldehyde in the eye, nervous system and other metabolically active organs. It immediately attacks and denatures the tissue structure proteins in which it is metabolized to nascent formaldehyde. This stimulates specific organ and subcellular autoimmunity which seems to be a preponderant source of the bad experiences reported by NutraSweet victims. Aspartic Acid is a neuroexcitotoxin present in damaging amounts in its own right, at the ADI for aspartame. Simple logic tells one that it will vastly increase the metabolism of methyl alcohol to formaldehyde in the desinosomes of the periventricular cells of the central nervous system, thus focusing the nascent formaldehyde attack there. This corresponds well with the symptomatologies often experienced, such as Lou Gehrigs's Disease (ALS), bulbar palsies, neurochormonal disorders, etc. Also visual disturbances, heart palpitations, infertility and fetal loss may be traced to aspartame ingestion. The diketopiperazine issue remains totally unresolved and dangerous. The amino acids that are released by hydrolysis, form eimers and isomers that are either not sufficiently studies or which are known substrates in undesirable pathological states such as Alzheimer's disease. There is the issue of the approval of aspartame for market, which has violated every principle of responsible science and responsible government. ....

         ......I highly recommend that you deny in every way possible any subterfuge of respectability that the aspartame people have enshrouded themselves and their product with in hopes of quickly denying its access to the worldwide marketplace. I write this, not believing that it will do the slightest bit of good in the sense of affecting the labeling issue per se, but that instead, it might reach some honest, concerned, conscientious individuals in the process." James D. Bowen, M.D.

         "The views of the FDA's Center for Food Safety read like a script written for Abbott & Costello in the sense of their heaving perceptions inside-out and upside-down. .. 329 fetuses were examined in 2 days by a single person (a clear impossibility).

"We have uncovered serious deficiencies in Searle's operation and
practices which undermined the basis for reliance on Searle's integrity
...Searle has not submitted all the facts or experiments to FDA,
retaining unto itself the unpermitted option of filtering, interpreting
and not submitting information ... an attitude of disregard for FDA's
mission of protection of the public health ... conduct which compromises
the scientific integrity of the studies."  14 test blunders are listed,
including:

    Substitution of animals (hiding deaths)
    Using sick animals on drugs (unreported)
    Incomplete examination, unreported tumors
    Missing batch records
    Mixing food so rats in the test could avoid the product
    Destroying rats before they could be fully analyzed.

Do you realize that these very same studies ARE WHAT APPROVED ASPARTAME!!!!!?

"It seems bizarre that essentially the same set of studies could provide
a foundation for a decision that ... demonstrated the safety of aspartame
... Although the General Accounting Office expresses the view that FDA
followed its required process, I sharply disagree ... although FDA may have
gone through the motions such a "process" or dance represented no more
than a farce and a mockery."

         Dr. Morgan Raiford/Methanol Toxicity/Blindness/aspartame

              May 20, 1987:  FACTS ABOUT ASPARTAME

The above product is also manufactured as NutraSweet (Equal).  This
pharmological spin-off is a highly profitable item, with a growing
market.  These products are used as a sweetener, some 200 times as sweet
as regular cane sugar.

This product has some highly toxic reactions in the human visual pathway,
and we are beginning to observe the tragic damage to the OPTIC NERVE such
as blindness, partial to total OPTIC NERVE ATROPHY.  Once this
destructive process has developed there is no return of visual
restoration.  We are beginning to see and observe another toxic reaction
which affects the central nervous system which is related to PHENYLALANINE
LEVELS IN THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM.  These observations are more vague,
however, it stimulates the damaging to the brain and the central nervous
system, having the manifestations as PKU NEURO DAMAGE.  Over 3000 cases
have been reported and the FDA to date has ignored this existence.

HUMAN VISUAL PATHWAY DAMAGE

The human visual pathway admits ninety percent of our intellectual input
to the brain and central nervous system.  All of the learning processes
are centered during ones life time.  The mechanism of this tragic damage
to the human visual system from this product is and has been known for
over a decade that visual loss takes place.  When this drug enters the
digestive tract, largely the upper portion, this ASPARTAME molecule spins

off a by product known as METHANOL or METHYL ALCOHOL.  This product
enters the blood stream and when these portions reach the highly
metabolic region of the OPTIC NERVE AND RETINA, PARTIAL ATROPHY CAN AND
DOES TAKE PLACE.  The vision can not do without oxygen and nutrition for
more than ninety seconds without revealing some damage.  Total loss of
vision is present and there is no return.  In the very early stages in
which is referred to as the "wet stage", treatment can be given and will
reserve the destructive pathology to the OPTIC NERVE and RETINA.  This
must be in the mind of the physician and he must understand the chemical
ongoing process.  The writer has seen many cases where the patent was
allowed to go to the degrees of blindness, as this diagnosis of OPTIC
NEURITIS was rendered, as the term IDIOPATHIC NEURITIS OF OPTIC NERVE was
given, usually steroids until systemic gross body and facial moon
developed.  This therapy has demonstrated the total lack of understanding
of the basic lack of BIO-CHEMICAL PHYSIOLOGY AT THE MOLECULAR LEVEL.

The variability or onset of the OPTIC NERVE ATROPHY is of a type that one
must first think of this pathology, and it requires a certain amount of
listening to the patient.  The quantity of symptoms vary with each patient.

Over the past year the writer has observed the fact that any portion of
the central nervous system can and is affected.  Since the chemical
PHENYLALANINE is mixed up with some metabolic mess, we have seen symptoms
of varying hue in the extremities, sensations of dullness of the
intellect, visual shadows, evidence of word structure reversing and some
hearing impairment is noted by the individual.  This can and will in time
cause problems in learning.  The medical community must alert itself that
we have a problem that has surfaced due to the factor of the drug
industry.  Parents must be alerted to the side reactions of this toxic
product and its reactions.

Sincerely,

MORGAN B. RAIFORD, M.D., D.Sc (Med) OPHTHALMOLOGY"

NOTE!   Aspartame was not approved until 1981, in dry foods. For over eight years the FDA refused to approve it because of the seizures and brain tumors this drug produced in lab animals. The FDA continued to refuse to approve it until President Reagan took office (a friend of Searle) and fired the FDA Commissioner who wouldn't approve it and appointed Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes. Even then there was so much opposition to approval that a Board of Inquiry was set up. The Board said: "Do not approve aspartame". Dr. Hayes OVERRULED his own Board of Inquiry. He left the FDA to go to work for Searle's PR firm and refused to speak to the press about it for 10 years! Monsanto bought Searle in l985. Now it is a multinational/multibillion dollar business selling YOU and I expensive toxins while making sure the drug companies and medical facilities/personnel consume your remaining dollars... until we have cashed in our chips and quit the game of life!

With the GOVERNMENT culpable (the FDA, Congress, a past president, other associated government organizations such as the CDC, FTC, NHI, and more) either through direct complicity or simple neglect, we have NO benefactors with deep pockets! The news media, for whatever reasons, has been mostly silent on this subject. This means that the ONLY way to get this toxin reclassified as a dangerous drug, unfit for human consumption, and OFF THE MARKET, is to let our voices be heard and bury them with sheer NUMBERS.

We either start now, or when there is an epidemic involving folks in the condition I was in on the Fifteenth Of June, 1996 ... hurting beyond contol, with no relief in sight, and with serious thoughts on the best means of self-distruction!