Letters to the Editor

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Oct, 2001

I respectfully urge the reader to review my writings before accepting Moser's statement that "well over 200 scientific studies in animals and humans have established the safety of aspartame. These include numerous studies in both adults and children, as well as special subpopulations: obese persons, diabetic persons, lactating women, patients suffering from chronic renal failure, patients suffering from alcoholic liver disease, and those individuals who bear one gene (carriers) of the genetic disease phenylketonuria (PKU)." In my opinion, each of these categories represent high-risk groups that should specifically avoid aspartame products!

It is also my opinion that the vast majority of corporate-sponsored studies on which Moser bases his case had significant flaws in their design, biased interpretation of the data, or both. These have been elaborated in my publications, especially the failure to use real-world products obtained from markets whose duration of storage and exposure to heat were unknown. These reservations apply as well to several analogs of aspartame for which approval is being sought, and Moser's total denial of methanol toxicity resulting from the release of considerable free methyl alcohol after aspartame ingestion.

Yet another fundamental issue confronted my conscience as a physician/ researcher. How could I ignore the mounting clinical and scientific evidence for pathogenetic clues to a number of public health enigmas derived from the study of aspartame disease? They included brain cancer, [4] Alzheimer 's disease, [5] addiction, [6] paradoxic obesity, and several major neuropsychiatric afflictions in children and adults - e.g., the simulation of multiple sclerosis.

Let me return to the undermining of clinical research from my several perspectives as a doctor in private practice, the author of multiple medical texts since 1958, and a voluntary corporate-neutral investigator with no grants or contracts. My studies have dealt with other potentially harmful substances. They include pentachlorophenol, arsenic, antistatic clothes softeners, the toxic contaminants of calcium supplements, fluoride, and even a warning about peppermint [7] in the same issue containing Moser's letter.

Dr. J.B. Wyngaarden [8] wrote a landmark article titled, "The Clinical Investigator as an Endangered Species," in 1979--two years before the arbitrary approval of aspartame by the FDA. In August 2001, The Institute for Health Policy [9] concluded: "Academic leaders perceive clinical research activities in academic health centers to be less healthy, of poorer quality, and facing greater challenges than nonclinical research activities."

I regard the flagrant denigration of motivated and accountable clinicians by self-serving corporate and professional interests, as illustrated in Moser's response, as a major contributory factor. Instead of encouraging such altruistic efforts, these obstacles serve as a reminder of the dedicated doctor in Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People who was humiliated for political and economic reasons when he attempted to warn about documented industrial poisons in the water supply. From his extensive exposure to the history of medicine, cannot the over-protesting Moser relate any of my efforts to the longstanding tradition of clinical observation and physician activism in which our profession takes pride?