The World Health Organization Proves Why Censorship is Dangerous

Minds change on a subject that was long ridiculed.

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We are continually bumping into the realization that our collective sensemaking processes suck. And with censorship on the rise, and being called for by more and more people, I can’t help but recall my personal experience to illustrate just how absurd what’s happening truly is. (I believe absurdity is necessary though.)

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, an entity within the World Health Organization, recently evaluated findings from both human and animal studies of aspartame and cancer. The group noted positive associations between aspartame consumption and hepatocellular carcinoma, a form of liver cancer.

To be clear, this isn’t a sudden admission of extreme danger with aspartame, but an acknowledgement of the uncertainty that exists around it. An uncertainty that has been reported on for many decades, mainly falling on deaf ears and met with ridicule.

Since our early days with Collective Evolution, we wrote many articles about aspartame. To note, those articles have been pulled due to consistent attacks we got from fact-checkers censoring content we published as early as 2010. Content that explored studies concluding more research is necessary due to findings that suggest many possible poor health outcomes from aspartame consumption, including cancer.

Back then, I personally did several investigations into the research behind aspartame. It has always been a shaky subject. The history of how aspartame became legal is filled with controversy.

In 1980, the FDA Public Board Of Inquiry voted unanimously to reject aspartame for human consumption as, in their words, flawed data, brain tumor concerns in animal studies, and a lack of long-term effects in humans were reason enough.

Of course, as more research emerges, minds can change. But did they change for good reason? We’ll get to that.

In 1985, Monsanto eventually bought the Aspartame patent from G.D. Searle and it soon became approved for human consumption. Research on the additive continued for years, but there was always a big question about how much it should be trusted.

Can We Trust The Research?

Keep the subject of cigarettes in your mind and how safe those turned out to be… according to the industry, doctors, and scientists.

There are piles of studies that illustrate concerns around kidney function, cancers, brain issues etc when it comes to aspartame consumption. There are also piles that suggest it is safe for consumption providing it’s not overconsumed.

The problem in navigating all the science and differing conclusions is the clear conflicts of interest involved in the research.

A study published in PLOS ONE in 2016 reported that researchers found very troubling conflicts of interest within research around aspartame.

Of the 31 scientific reviews analyzed by Professor Bero and her colleagues, 4 were paid for by the sweetener industry, 10 were funded from non-industry sources, 13 revealed no funding source and 4 were funded by the sugar and water industries, which were classified as competitors to the sweetener industry.

This next quote from the study is the same thing that stuck out to me during my research back in 2011:

"100 per cent of the industry-sponsored studies concluded that aspartame was safe and 92 per cent of the independently funded studies identified adverse effects of aspartame consumption".

Simply: when the industry isn’t involved in research there appear to be health concerns associated with aspartame. But when the industry is involved, it’s safe.

This at the very least should always make one question what the truth is, and leaves no good reason to ridicule either opinion.

Reporting on this finding in 2011 came with everything you’d expect: ridicule, name-calling, and being labelled a conspiracy theorist.

Everything we tried to raise awareness about back then was simply pointing to the fact that science must be questioned because industry bias may play a big role in why experts are appearing to disagree. This is why it’s somewhat bizarre to me to see that in 2023 a section of The World Health Organization is suddenly calling aspartame a possible carcinogen.

Again, they are not confirming it with certainty, but they are recognizing what outlets like ours have been stating for a decade and a half, that something doesn’t quite seem right and it’s valid to have concern.

I’ve done a lot of work to move past the grief of what has happened to a business I put my heart and soul into only to have it taken from me via censorship.

It was talking about things like aspartame research before it was acceptable to do so that took our audience reach from 30 million readers a month to just 2 million readers a month. And from having a well-rounded journalistic team to having just a couple of freelance writers. All while those who toe the line of regulatory agencies as ultimate truth get to stay and play.

I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of times we reported on things we were absolutely ridiculed and censored for, only for them to become true or acceptable to talk about 5 to 10 years later.

Why is it so easy for so many journalists, scientists, and fact-checkers to get it wrong? Because they simply follow consensus without truly doing extensive research. I can’t say for sure how they operate, but it feels like those who toe the line simply do something like this:

• Someone makes a claim that seems controversial.

• The journalist assumes: “Oh that can’t be right. How do I prove that with authoritative sources like the WHO, FDA, or fact-checkers.”

• They then write a debunking article appealing to authority figures, without acknowledging all of the areas that legitimately come with uncertain details that make the controversial position actually quite plausible.

After all, look at one fact checker who looked at health issues of aspartame back in 2018. They state via a quote from a regulatory board:

“Claims that aspartame is associated with numerous ailments are not supported by the facts,” FACS says. Myths about aspartame continue to circulate online “despite the evidence produced by three decades of scientific and medical research”. 

This is utter bullshit. Which facts are facts? Many studies suggested possible poor health outcomes, and many did not. We already determined the evidence is deeply in question because of conflicts of interest, so why claim that this is a myth when the science doesn’t say that at all?

Here in 2023, we have a major health agency suggesting the science is not so settled. How will these fact checkers pivot? Who is there to fact check them and remove their ability to operate as a business?

The uncertainties around aspartame have been well-established for over 20 years, yet dialogue was shut down in the public sphere using ridicule and assumption. Will the debunkers now hold more space for uncertainty? Will we re-imagine how we should treat people who raise concerns backed by legitimate evidence? Or continue to ridicule them?

For myself, my research back then led me to not consume aspartame because I felt it could mount poor health outcomes. This is mainly because I don't look life in a vacuum from a highly reductionist lens, but instead a holistic one.

I understand we are exposed to a ton of toxins in our food, water and air, and a cumulative effect must be considered. I also believe humans are capable of much better health than what is considered normal today.

It's incredibly hard to find a pure causal link between one substance and a health outcome. I can only control what I can: what I eat, drink, put on my body etc. I can’t control the air I breathe outside too well or the water that I’m exposed to in some cases. Remaining light-hearted and affecting what’s in your control is all you can do.

We Can’t Ignore Fake News Either

I feel the polarized positions on so many issues are not just born out of people’s desire to defend their position, but also of real happenings.

It’s not as if the natural health space and alternative media space have been perfect over the years.

Yes, there is complete bullshit published out there. It’s produced by people whether accidentally or knowingly. (I personally know a couple who post fake stories just to make money.)

I have spent a lot of time over the course of my career pointing to the issues in mainstream and alternative media. Poor journalism in the alt sphere or people just trying to make money, degrades the quality of conversation that can be had about controversial subjects because they create an easy target for the mainstream to say: “See how absurd the arguments coming from these people are?”

Now, anything that sounds similar to the claims of the lowest common denominator can be written off as BS.

Behind the scenes back in the early 2010s, I conversed with many website owners in the alt space, trying to appeal to the need to increase the quality of content as I sensed it would eventually lead to a massive hammer strike from a society hell-bent on controlling everything.

That hammer came in late 2016 with the great Facebook Page Purge. Thousands of pages were deleted overnight. You could argue many of those pages were responsible for posting a lot of bunk, but many went down that did a good job. Others, like ours with 5.1 million subscribers, were heavily censored in the process.

I don’t agree with censorship, but I could also see it coming a mile away. Still, what I watched happen in the alt sphere over the years makes me think of the old saying: this is why we can’t have nice things.

It’s also why I wrote this essay calling for an up-levelling of dialogue around controversial issues. We can’t be vague, hyperbolic, and insulting, otherwise, we don’t truly connect and make sense together, we create echo chambers.

I care about truth, I care about respecting one another, and I care about making the world a better place. What does it take to truly live in alignment with those feelings?

Further, the people we are being told not to trust are often the ones getting it right years in advance. How do we correct for this?

How We Can Solve The Problem

My friend Madhava and I recently had a conversation about Sam Harris and his position on Robert F Kennedy Jr. We expose the hefty double standards Harris employs to make his arguments and conclude with ways in which we can go about more meaningful sensemaking in our modern society.

You can watch the full video here, but ultimately Sam Harris’ position on people like RFK Jr. is: some things we just know and need to follow the scientific consensus on. We shouldn’t platform people who challenge the scientific consensus.

This is a very slippery slope for obvious reasons.

One simple example I can draw upon from my direct experience is our reporting on aspartame at Collective Evolution over the years. Our articles garnered millions of views over the course of time. The public, scientists, and academics were able to read reports on important research that today we collectively recognize are worthy of consideration even though back then it was ridiculed.

Perhaps it was reports like this that led to continued study that eventually acknowledged the potential danger of aspartame in the mainstream.

If CE (and others like it) never existed and were censored into oblivion way back then, as someone like Sam Harris would want, how would the public, scientists, and academics know these subjects are worthy of consideration? It would be much more difficult as we all know the mainstream media today has little courage to challenge the consensus.

Just read through the mainstream media coverage about this latest aspartame announcement. They are reporting on it with a sense of disdain in their voice, heavily protecting the existing consensus while conceding that ‘sure, maybe we have to open our minds a tiny bit, but no, the conspiracy theorists are not right!!!‘

I’m proposing that we stop holding perspectives like Sam Harris’, that assume we already KNOW and things cannot be challenged. We don’t know, about many subjects. And when we shut down dialogue and turn to ridicule, we potentially harm public health for decades before getting it right.

I propose a spirit of curiosity, a spirit of wonder that has us show up at the table of dialogue and not resort to petty attacks, emotional outbursts, ideology and protecting our religion… even when it’s science.

This is why I believe in full-bodied sensemaking. Staying somatically connected to ourselves and acknowledging the ways in which we succumb to bias via defense, emotion, protection, fear etc. With awareness, we have a choice.

When I look at the tone of characters like Sam Harris, Mick West, Michael Shermer, or the Conspirituality trio of Matthew Remski, Julian Marc Walker, and Derek Beres, (all debunkers to some extent) I don’t see a wonderous curiosity all that often, I see rigid intellect, anger, judgement, smugness, and arrogance. “We know best, so trust us.”

And while they absolutely get it right much of the time, there are many instances where they have no reason to be so certain, where they clearly get it wrong, yet continue forth with the arrogance of perfection.

I’m not suggesting this is who they are absolutely, but that these characteristics are temporarily held. Everyone can change, and I believe it’s important we always hold space for each other to evolve, and make it a comfortable space to do so, just as I ask you to hold that for me.