阿斯巴甜可能致癌？无糖饮料不能喝了？15分钟英文短片为你科普阿斯巴甜的黑历史！（附视频&解说稿）

路透社6月29日消息，据两位知情人士透露，世界上最常见的人工甜味剂之一阿斯巴甜或将在下个月被世界卫生组织（WHO）的癌症研究机构——国际癌症研究机构（IARC）列为“可能对人类致癌的物质”。当前，市面上销售的诸多打上“无糖”标签的食品饮料中，实际上都使用了阿斯巴甜等甜味剂。

目前，IARC依据患癌几率的高低将致癌因素分为五类：1类：对人类有确认的致癌性；2A类：对人类很可能有致癌性2B类：有可能对人类致癌；3类：尚不能确定其是否对人体致癌；4类：对人体基本无致癌作用。

根据媒体披露的信息，IARC将把阿斯巴甜列为“2B类”，即有可能对人类致癌。早在今年5月，世界卫生组织发布了一份关于非糖甜味剂的新指南，建议大多数人应避免食用安赛蜜、阿斯巴甜、糖精、三氯蔗糖、甜菊糖等非糖甜味剂。

世卫组织在指南中表示，有证据表明，使用非糖甜味剂对减少成人或儿童的体脂没有任何长期益处。此外，长期使用非糖甜味剂可能会产生潜在的不良影响，例如导致成人患2型糖尿病、心血管疾病和死亡率的风险增加。

代糖阿斯巴甜到底有着什么样的黑历史？这个英文短片阐述说：这就是美国食品和药物管理局的腐败故事，以及他们在批准阿斯巴甜中的作用。

- [Kiana] The FDA is the only thing standing between you  and the money-hungry pharmaceutical industry  it's meant to regulate.  Its noble job is to ensure everything you put in your body  is safe and effective. 

- Safe and effective, 

- Safe and effective. 

- Safe and effective. 

- [Kiana] But what would happen to public health  if the FDA was compromised? 

- People say that the FDA is broken, is it? 

- [Senator Sanders] Nine out of the last 10  FDA commissioners went on to work  for the pharmaceutical industry. 

- Has now shifted to being largely funded  by the very industries it regulates.  How can an agency regulate an industry it's being funded by? 

- How much influence does industry really have on the FDA? 

- I need to tell you guys  about the terrifying history of aspartame.  And you're probably like,  "Wait, what does the FDA have to do with aspartame?"  Well, unfortunately, everything.  For years we've been promised  that aspartame is extremely safe.  Actually, specifically, we've been promised  that aspartame is the most well-tested food additive  in history, except history tells  a much, much different story. 

- But for some consumers and scientists,  the dream may be too good to be true. 

- What I found was really quite frightening.  They got the test results they wanted  by manipulating the method. 

- FDA needs to reassess that in this time around  FDA should do it right. 

- A story that reveals major conflicts of interest  within the FDA and exposes the true power  of filthy rich corporations and greed to corrupt  the very institutions that have been constructed 

- [Announcer] Better known by its brand names  NutraSweet or Equal, aspartame is the most popular  sugar substitute in the world. 

- [Kiana] Today it's consumed by over 200 million people  and used in more than 6,000 different products,  including Listerine, multivitamins,  and most of all, diet soda. 

- [Reporter] What most consumers don't know  is that aspartame's approval was one of the most contested  in FDA history. 

- [Announcer] 100% NutraSweet. 

- Oh, that's the good stuff. 

- [Announcer] Why some things taste better than others. 

- As the story goes, aspartame was discovered  totally accidentally in the mid '60s by a chemist  working at the pharmaceutical company GD Searle.  Searle submitted the application  to get aspartame approved by the FDA in 1973  and without any further investigation,  aspartame was very quickly approved for public consumption.  In the eyes of the FDA at that time,  aspartame was simply assumed to be safe.  Back in those days, the FDA's approval process  was extremely relaxed.  The FDA assumed these companies were telling the truth.  They assumed the research was conducted properly  and they didn't bother to look any further  into the studies themselves or verify them at all,  but the seemingly obvious flaws with this relaxed system  would soon be exposed when the FDA  started becoming very suspicious of GD Searle.  An independent scientist had just published his findings  in a medical journal demonstrating  that one of Searle's widely-used drugs  was causing cancer in rats at alarming rates.  This raised red flags at the FDA because Searle  had told the FDA that this drug was safe  and the FDA had then gone and told the thousands of people  that use this drug that it was totally safe.  FDA actually accused Searle of doctoring  animal experimentation data to conceal the fact  that they have a propensity for causing cancer,  triggering a $500 million investigation  into four of Searle's drugs,  including the food additive aspartame.  An FDA task force was assembled to scrutinize the research  Searle had provided to get their drugs approved. 

- In the early 1970s, I examined the animal studies  submitted by GD Searle. 

- [Kiana] And when they did, it became immediately apparent  that something was terribly wrong.  The experiments were so poorly conducted  and riddled with error that the FDA commissioner at the time  called it "incredibly sloppy science,"  adding that what was discovered was "reprehensible." 

- It is unthinkable that any reputable toxicologist  giving a completely objective evaluation of this data  could conclude anything other than that the study  was uninterpretable and worthless and should be repeated.  It's obvious we were being conned. 

- The task force shocking findings were published  in what was called the Bressler Report. 

- There were some very serious deficiencies  in the conduct of some of those experiments. 

- [Kiana] In some instances, animals were recorded alive  one week, dead another, and alive again weeks later. 

- [Man] Animals that died after being fed NutraSweet,  they didn't autopsy the animals right away. 

- Many animal tissues, a significant number,  were autolyzed, that is decomposed  before any postmorteming examinations were performed. 

- Some of them were not autopsied  more than a year afterward  and of course the tissues broke down and liquified  and so they couldn't do proper studies on them,  but they reported it as if they had  and they reported these as normal. 

- Tumors appeared in some of the animals  and they were simply cut out and discarded, not reported.  There were occasions when antibiotics were administered,  but that was not reported. 

- Certainly if anybody had tried to make this up,  they couldn't have, they would have had to do it better. 

- All of this by GD Searle? 

- GD Searle and some of the companies  working under contract to GDS Searle.  

- These are all of the issues  the task force found with the aspartame data,  and in addition to all of these errors,  making the data effectively useless, for one,  the animals in the study got extremely sick,  quite contrary to what was reported by Searle  about aspartame to the FDA. 

- They had a monkey study and in this monkey study  they were fed aspartame  and they were fed aspartame with milk.  Out of the seven monkeys they had,  I think one or two died and four or five  had grand mal seizures. 

- If we are basing the amount of aspartame  that we're putting in all of these foods today  on these studies, then it is a disaster. 

- [Man] Thank you very much. 

- The FDA was so disturbed by the Bressler Report findings  that they wrote a 33 page letter demanding  that the US Attorney's Office criminally investigate  GD Searle in front of a grand jury.  But despite at least three pleas from the FDA,  that criminal investigation never took place.  After everything we've just seen,  how could this not result in a criminal investigation,  if not jail time?  The FDA seemed very confident that this  was not just some innocent mistake on the part of Searle.  Well, this is the point in this story where stuff  starts to get really crazy.  Up until this point, the FDA and the government officials  involved have done their job, the very important job  of keeping the people safe from the corporations  that they're meant to regulate, but as we'll see,  it only takes a few sell-outs to change  the course of history.  Halfway through the criminal investigation into GD Searle,  Samuel Skinner, the United States Federal Attorney  in charge of the whole thing, quit to take another job.  He had accepted a position with none other  than GD Searle's law firm.  This was a huge problem because time was ticking.  There was only a matter of months left  that the case could be pursued  before the statute of limitations ran out  and no criminal trial could take place. 

- The common denominator for all of this,  unfortunately, is money and the amount of money  that was flashed around induced people  to drop the lawsuit against the GD Searle  and come work for the very firm that they  were going to try for illegal activity. 

- [Kiana] Skinner handed the case over to his assistant,  who ultimately let the statute of limitations expire  before taking action. 

- [Reporter] As a result, the investigation was dropped.  Skinner denies any responsibility for this. 

- And actually seven of the key people that made decisions  that kept NutraSweet moving through the process  ended up working for one or another  NutraSweet-using industry. 

- [Kiana] 15 Months later, Skinner's assistant  would also quit and be hired with GD Searle's law firm. 

- And that's what happened with the US Attorney.  That's what happened with several people  working for the Food and Drug Administration at that time.  If they passed aspartame,  literally they were promised great jobs  when they finished with FDA. 

- Amid the controversy, in 1980, a public board of inquiry  convened to determine whether or not aspartame  was truly safe for public consumption.  Three FDA scientists voted unanimously to ban aspartame  until further research could be conducted,  yet on a Saturday, Independence Day, July 4th, 1981,  aspartame would be approved for sale  in the United States of America.  So we have a pharmaceutical company this close  to being sued for fraud and we have a board of experts  saying, "I really don't think aspartame is safe  for the millions of people who consume it daily."  So how the hell did we get from that to aspartame  getting full approval just one year later?  Well, the very unfortunate answer  is the trifecta of politics, greed and corruption.  A struggling GD Searle called in some political muscle.  A few years prior in '77, Searle hired a new CEO. 

- [Man] He's a fixer, an operative.  You assign him a job and he goes and he does it. 

- [Kiana] But this wasn't just any CEO,  it was none other than Donald Rumsfeld. 

- [Reporter] One of the most polarizing political figures  of the post 9/11 age, why, why have you done it?  (Rumsfeld laughing) 

- [Kiana] This guy was as connected  as you could possibly get.  Here he is with President Nixon,  whispering in the ear of President Ford,  and in front of the Pentagon on 9/11 with Bush Jr.  When he became CEO of Searle,  Rumsfeld was fresh off a position as Secretary of Defense  of the United States of America.  This guy was a Republican ex-naval captain, ex-congressman,  Pentagon chief, US president nominee,  who served under three separate presidents  in the White House, and whose tenure  was marred with controversy,  bad weapons deals, torture scandals, you know,  your run-of-the-mill political stuff.  Rumor has it upon taking the position with Searle,  Rumsfeld promised to call in his marks to get it approved  and that he did.  On January 22nd, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan,  Rumsfeld's boy took office as US President,  Rumsfeld and GD Searle applied again to have aspartame  approved after it had been denied earlier that year,  except this time with President Reagan on Searle's side,  things were much different.  They even handpicked a new FDA commissioner. 

- I'm Dr. Arthur Hayes,  Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. 

- Arthur Hayes might not look like much,  but he would go down in history  as one of the most corrupt FDA commissioners of all time.  Shortly after taking the position,  Hayes would overrule the FDA's previously unanimous vote  to ban aspartame as unsafe,  approving the controversial substance  for public consumption.  A few years later, Hayes would resign from his position  as FDA commissioner among allegations  that he was accepting bribes and riding on the jet planes  of the pharmaceutical companies and food companies  he was meant to be regulating.  Oh yeah, and Arthur Hayes would also take a job  with a company associated with GD Searle.  By 1983, sales had reached $336 million  and accounted for almost 40% of Searle's profits that year.  But the concerns about NutraSweet didn't end there,  actually, they were only beginning.  People began to report symptoms  similar to what had been discovered in the aspartame studies  two decades earlier.  A Freedom of Information Act request forced the FDA  to release a list of 92 aspartame symptoms  reported by at least 10,000 people,  including seizures, memory loss, vision problems,  and other neurological issues.  But what about today?  Well, the FDA's official website still claims  that "aspartame is one of the most exhaustively studied  substances in the human food supply,  with more than 100 studies supporting its safety."  But I found this phrase as early as 1985. 

- In response to these concerns  raised in the scientific community,  we hear that NutraSweet is the most tested food additive  in history, proven eighth and over 100 studies  that were used for FDA approval. 

- It means that it refers to the studies  that are being picked apart in the Bressler Reports. 

- It is a disaster. 

- And since then, sure, more research has been conducted,  but it's problematic. 

- And what I found was really quite frightening  and that was that yes, there were many, many studies  in the literature which did a test to aspartame safety,  but they were essentially all funded by the industry.  The studies which were not funded by the industry,  virtually all of them did identify one type of problem  or another with aspartame. 

- A quick scan of PubMed in 2022 shows the same thing.  Independent scientists are frequently concluding  that aspartame is unsafe or at least worthy  of further research, but for every single study  that comes up with a negative conclusion about aspartame,  there are a handful like this.  "It is clear that aspartame is safe  and there are no unresolved questions.  Affiliations: funded by the NutraSweet company."  Here's another positive study.  Collaborator: Ajinomoto, and look what they sell,  as well as probably hundreds  by these third party PR companies  acting on behalf of the industry. 

- Let me ask you this question.  Of all the studies that you have funded,  have any of them come up  with any negative contusions at all? 

- I am not aware of any, senator,  and I am not aware of any studies that anyone else  has funded which had come up with negative conclusions. 

- I know the FDA was only a small piece  of this entire corrupt puzzle,  and there were clearly plenty of people  doing their job there,  but as much as they were only a small piece,  the FDA was the most important piece.  The FDA was holding the line.  We expect massive corporations to try and take advantage  where they can, but if we can't trust the FDA,  who can we trust?  Thank you guys for watching the video  and I'll see you in the next one.