How can I find unbiased studies of the safety of aspartame?

Answer 1

If you are interested in potential toxicity of any chemical I suggest you do the following:

STEP 1
you search for a Material Safety Data Sheet (just google MSDS aspartame) and look up the Hazard Information - (MSDS are legally required to be prepared by chemical companies and list specific toxicology data. As such is as close to the basic facts as possible).
For example the one I checked said:

Potential Acute Health Effects:
Slightly hazardous in case of skin contact (irritant, permeator), of eye contact (irritant), of ingestion, of inhalation.

Potential Chronic Health Effects:
CARCINOGENIC EFFECTS: Not available.
MUTAGENIC EFFECTS: Not available.
TERATOGENIC EFFECTS: Not available.
DEVELOPMENTAL TOXICITY: Not available.
Repeated or prolonged exposure is not known to aggravate medical condition.

STEP 2
If you want to dig further and see what other scientific information is available to answer the chronic effects that are not listed I suggest you check out a website known as PubMed.
This is a free databased whish lists many of the life science articles published since the mid 60's. It is THE resource that life scientists (such as myself) look up to find out what research has been done. See
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=pubmed)

Enter the term of interest (i.e. aspartame safety) . If you get a lot of hits you may want to just click on the reviews tab. In the case of aparame safety you get 31 articles (10 of which are reviews).

You can then click on the article and get a short summary of the results. In some cases there is also a link to the full artilce which may be free or may require you to pay (or have a subscription) to that journal.

COMMENTS ON BIAS
I accept that we are all biased, but that should not lead you to reject what someone say's out-of-hand. Rather you need to look at more than 1 source to balance-out the bias.

Also don't just assume that the only cause of bias is "who gains financially" - many other factors weigh in as well. For example a university professor or a journalist or a naturopath or a celebrity may want to gain notariety to encourage getting more funding, getting their book bought, or just for fame or pride.
(In my opinion as someone who has worked at Universities and in companies Ego is as big if not bigger cause of bias). This is not neccessarily bad as I will not want to have my reputation destroyed by publishing something I know will later be proved wrong !!!

i.e. don't just ignore it becuase a company published it or just accept it because it was published by a University Prof or a public interest group.

I suggest that you check out a website called the sense about science which explains how scientistific information is reviewed, which hopefully will help you in determining how much weight you should give to various sources of science information.

Answer 2

Nearly all of the world's medical research is listed on Medline. You can search this subject on Medline by entering "entrez pubmed" into your search engine. Then enter 'aspartame' into the search window at the pubmed website. Be sure to read the recent study out of Italy that found aspartame to be highly carcinogenic in lab animals.

Best wishes and good luck.

Answer 3

It always depends on who pays for the study. This is like asking for a history book that is an unbiased account of history, one without politial bias one way or the other. Everyone has a political bias, at least those who write books. Most studies will also have a "leaning" one way or the other. Is is best to look at the raw data, rather then the conclusions drawn.

Answer 4

http://www.questia.com/ has journal articles from scholarly journals and studies from all over the world. It'll probably have stuff from the New England Journal of Medicine and other reputable researchers.

Answer 5

If you want to stay sexy limit the amount of aspartame you consume!!!!

Answer 6

There's a lot on the web, I believe.