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The knowingly false and highly contrived punditry position on methanol poisoning from Aspartame is that any such poisoning cannot exist because "Fruit and vegetable juice has as much or more methanol than even a heavy consumer would ever get from Aspartame consumption" This is a fraudulently lying position and, following herein, are several succinct points that the average non scientist might like to review to rebut this vacuous punditry. First the high levels of methanol alluded as coming from juices, ie. Tomato, orange and apple juice never existed! Methods were used to make the measurements that could not even detect the minute traces actually present in the juices, so the minimal readings inherent in the method were used instead of the actual, undetectably low values of methanol in the juices. Then punditry methods were used that produced methanol rather than just measuring it: Flame photometry and strong nucleophilic colorimetry. All of this is "science falsely so called"; A major societal problem at present.

Flame photometry uses the heat of a flame to excite a substance to emit photons that are then spectrotopically analyzed to measure what is present. Problem is that the heat of a flame breaks down the healthy nutrients of fruit and vegetable products into degradation products commonly known as "smoke". Yes, smoke has carbon monoxide, methanol, formaldehyde and all sorts of organic toxins in it as the result of the thermal breakdown and degradation of the organic matter of which fruits and vegetables are composed. From a health standpoint all this points out is that you should not smoke, nor use Aspartame which is toxologically very similar to smoke.

The use of strong nucleophilic reagents to measure methanol, likewise breaks down fruit and vegetable products to produce it rather than to just measure methanol. Pectin is the source of the methanol in this instance. Pectin is at the heart of most vegetal systems. Just as our heart and blood vessels contain and maintain much of our circulating body fluids in dynamic equilibrium so pectin keeps the plants' fluids in a suitable gel form. Pectin is a large chemical lattice of sugars and alcohols, which serves as a "molecular sponge" for water, which is why it is useful to make jams and jellies. (likewise, unlike Aspartame, they are noted to be healthful and non-toxic upon thousands of years of widespread human use.) Methanol is the weakest nucleophile, so when much stronger nucleophiles are added to the reagent solution, they readily displace the methanol from the pectin, taking its place in the pectin molecule and pushing the methanol out as nascent, newly manufactured, free methanol. This has no relationship whatsoever to the human experience with fruits and vegetables or their nutritional preparations such as juices, jams or jellies, but does mimic the production of methanol when Aspartame breaks down in drinks., i.e. the Persian Gulf Syndrome.

In the human digestive tract quite the opposite occurs with pectin. The juice, jam or jelly first enters the human digestion containing, for any practical purposes, no measurable methanol. Upon entering the stomach it is highly acidified by the stomach acid, which is just the opposite of being in a nucleophilically reactive environment. This would be called an electrophilic environment, which would seek then,by chemical reactivity, to remove to remove nucleophilic substances such as alcohols from the pectin. Methyl alcohol, being virtually as weak as water as a nucleophile is not reactive with the stomach acid and is therefore, not thereby removed from the pectin molecule but remains an intrinsic part of it. Ethanol (regular old sipping alcohol) is, however, stripped out of the pectin and absorbed directly through the stomach wall in amounts that are immediately metabolized by the liver with no ill effect, but along with the other ethanol present in juices, rather is protective of methanol poisoning from other sources. This point is but little appreciated by the medical profession in general, but is well known to mechanics, who in the case of accidentally ingesting methanol, will often successfully treat themselves by merely ingesting orange juice and going on about their work with no further problems. I encountered a hair raising account of this bleak medical ignorance written by a medical doctor who was working in an isolated, remote refugee camp in southeast Asia. The camp had run out of alcoholic beverages, which are a medically recognized antidote for methanol poisoning. They had lots of orange juice and vitamin nutritionals on hand though, and when one of their medical colleagues was accidentally poisoned by unknowingly ingesting methanol they had the horrible, soul wrenching experience of watching their fellow doctor die the frightening, agonizing, suffering death of methanol poisoning. They believed his fate to be irreparably sealed and that he was doomed because they did not have ethanol nor any other known alcohol dehydrogenase inhibitor available to them to "treat" him with, while in fact, they had in their very hands the orange juice and other vitamin protective factors that would have saved their colleague's life and well being. Such is the medical ignorance engendered and ingrained in the profession by the punditry lies designed to protect the indefensible Nutrasweet.

This depletion of the ethyl alcohol from pectin, ingested in nutritional amounts, leaves its binding sites for alcohol highly unsaturated so the methyl alcohol is held even more tightly as a part of the pectin molecule and throughout the rest of the assimilative digestive processes any other traces of methanol, from any other source, are chemically "sponged up" by the alcohol depleted pectin and thus snatched from the alimentary canal before it can even be absorbed.

Thus fruit juice is highly protective of methanol poisoning rather than serving as a source of methanol as the Aspartame pundits would maintain. Moreover the fruit and vegetable juices contain relatively high amounts of folic acid, niacin, vitamin C, and B complex vitamins which serve to directly detoxify the methanol toxic axis in the metabolic processes and, are therefore also protective. On the other hand "Nutrasweet" is non nutritional and affords none of the protective factors afforded by fruit and vegetable juices but rather consumes them in it's inherent metabolism leaving the human organism depleted of them on a milligram for milligram basis. This depletion therefore, is made all the more overwhelming to the health by the immense volumes of Aspartame products that some consume.

The methanol poisoning from Aspartame is so highly synergized by it's being estherized into the larger, biologically reactive entirety that it ends up an alcohol poisoning about twenty thousand times as potent as the intoxication from ethanol, on a per weight basis, making the drug and toxic effects of even small amounts of Aspartame significant. "The rest of the story", as horrifying as it may be, is too long to be related here but is available in its entirety in articles by myself and other doctors and scientists on excellent net sites such as "dorway" and "holisticmed" as well as in Dr. Hyman Robert's excellent medical text.

James Bowen, M.D. Betty Martini, Mission Possible International, www.dorway.com 770 242-2599