February 12, 2006
The Lowdown on Sweet?
By MELANIE WARNER
WHEN Dr. Morando Soffritti, a cancer researcher in Bologna, Italy, saw the results of his team's seven-year study on aspartame, he knew he was about to be injected into a bitter controversy over this sweetener, one of the most contentiously debated substances ever added to foods and beverages.
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 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.
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration says it has also taken note of the study, which is available online (
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2005/8711/abstract.html) and is scheduled to be published next month in a medical journal financed by the National Institutes of Health. F.D.A. officials say that they, too, intend to conduct a thorough review.
Documents from the F.D.A. and records from the Federal Register indicate that, in the years before the F.D.A. approved aspartame, the agency had serious concerns about the accuracy and credibility of Searle's aspartame studies. From 1977 to 1985 — during much of the approval process — Searle was headed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is now the secretary of defense; Searle was acquired by Monsanto in 1985. A 1976 report from an F.D.A. task force, for example, found that Searle's studies on aspartame were "poorly conceived, carelessly executed, or inaccurately analyzed or reported." In response to the report, the F.D.A. asked the Justice Department to open a grand jury investigation into whether two of Searle's aspartame studies had been falsified or were incomplete. A grand jury was never convened, however."
Much more on Searle, Rumsfeld, the FDA and the industry-funded "studies" conducted over the years:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/business/yourmoney/12sweet.html