We are the laboratory rats!

Part two - a special

report on aspartame, Additive 951

Monday, 02 May 2005 20:02

By Chris Wheeler

- How a popular artificial sweetener in all diet drinks, sugarless gum & ice cream & a host of

sugar-free diet, fitness and drug products, is probably creating health problems for a good

number of Australians.

Aspartame is sold as NutraSweet and Equal and is in thousands of foods and diet drinks. At

every point in the fertility process aspartame destroys, beginning with the gleam in Mom and

Pops eyes, it ruins female sexual response and induces male sexual dysfunction. Beyond this,

aspartame disrupts foetal development by aborting it or inducing defects. And if a live child is

born, aspartame may have heinously damaged the DNA of the baby, cursing future

generations.

Dr James Bowen, M.D. in Aspartame Murders Infants in violation of Title 18, Chapter 50A, Sec

1091-3 of the Domestic Genocide Code see www.dorway.com.

Death is sudden and strikes by surprise in the case of heavy aspartame consumption. Chuck

Fleming down in Virginia, USA, was a fitness fanatic, body builder and basketball player who

drank litres of aspartame-containing diet drinks every day as part of his fitness routine and

suddenly dropped dead - hardly surprising under the circumstances. The autopsy showed

chronic methanol poisoning, enlarged heart, fatty liver, pulmonary oedema, etc - all

symptoms of aspartame abuse. Aspartame was the real guilty party but his wife Diane is now

in jail serving a 50-year sentence, accused of murdering the man she loved. The case is

presently under appeal.

Says methanol expert Dr Woodrow Monte When diet sodas and soft drinks, sweetened with

aspartame, are used to replace fluid loss during exercise and physical exertion in hot climates,

the intake of methanol can exceed 250 mg/day or 32 times the US Environmental Protection

Agencys recommended limit of consumption for this cumulative poison. (1)

Contained in beverages like Diet Coke, Pepsi Light and the long list of aspartame-containing

diet drinks now available in your local supermarket, and supplemented by the idea constantly
plugged on popular TV programmes that drinking Diet Coke, etc, is cool and fashionable, a

chilled diet drink is included as an essential in many fitness gym exercise programmes. Its

also added to an enormous number of fitness products aimed at bulking up muscle and

athletes intent on building healthy bodies chug it down with gay abandon and then wonder

why their performance falls off and the headaches and migraines run out of control.

Janet Starr Hull, a formerly fit aerobics instructor, was one of those who ended up paralysed in

a hospital bed, her body totally out of control, her mind racing with the question What is

causing these problems? But it took months of medical tests for the penny to finally drop,

during which not a single medical expert ever asked her about what she, in typical American

fashion, ate and drank every day - an endless variety of aspartame-containing products. Her

momentous - but terribly obvious - discovery of the source of her problem eventuated from

simply examining her daily diet and listing all the products containing aspartame.

She wrote a book back in 2000 telling the story of her near-death experience with aspartame

products Sweet Poison How the Worlds Most Popular Artificial Sweetener is Harming Us

(Vision Paperbacks, London, 2000). Testament to its popularity in Australia, I bought a copy

from a book remainders bin for 50 cents! Given greater popularity and a few favourable

reviews in the media, it could have saved a lot of misery for a lot of Australians.

In the scientific and medical press this toxin has undergone more serious investigation of its

potential harm to human physiology than September 9/11 or the Chernobyl nuclear

meltdown, yet 24 years after its approval for use in the USA we still dutifully toddle through

supermarket turnstiles with kilos of the stuff and then wonder why we always feel so run-

down with a host of - well, to be frank, 92 different US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ)-classifiable medical symptoms - including

headaches, numbness, fatigue, blurred vision and blindness, heart palpitations, brain lesions

and tumours, memory loss, dizziness, muscle spasms, miscarriages, sexual dysfunction,

irritability, anxiety attacks, vertigo, epileptic seizures, rashes, tachycardia, tinnitus, joint pain,

nausea, mood alterations and depression, hearing loss, slurred speech, loss of taste, and

insomnia, as well as eroding intelligence and short-term memory. It also helps trigger

multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, Epstein Barr, Parkinsons, Alzheimers,

diabetes, mental retardation, lymphoma, and birth defects.

Of course nearly all these symptoms can be associated with some other classifiable disease so

your local GPs, unless they have been doing their homework (and most of them havent) and

unless they take a full history concentrating on the patients daily diet (and most of them
dont!), wont pick aspartame as the causative factor and will probably diagnose the symptom

as caused by a virus, their usual catch-all diagnosis. Unfortunately for the aspartame-

poisoning victim, a prescription of antibiotics or painkillers will cure nothing. Fixing symptoms

doesnt cure the disease - you must stop the cause.

There is growing evidence in the expert literature to suggest that aspartame may be a

causative factor in the growing incidence of irrational and anti-social behaviour - road and air

travel rage, hospital and ambulance officer assaults, school playground incidents, teenage and

adult suicides and the almost endemic depression now being widely discussed in the media.

Were talking, after all, about a widely consumed toxin, which is a key ingredient in thousands

of products potentially part of our daily diet, not about more expensive recreational drugs,

legal or illegal.

Human & media denial

What is there about us human beings that makes us such gullible Patsies for any specious

piece of nonsense passing in front of our noses, clearly promoted with an eye not on our

health, but on the almighty dollar?

The last time I wrote up this story for a popular Australian publication (not LIVING NOW, of

course!) it got mangled beyond recognition by the frightened editor and re-written to include

an invitation to visit websites that specifically support aspartame use, as part of that balance

in journalism fiction that is always used by those in the media who somehow dislike voyaging

into the real world where facts are simply facts and the truth can be hard to bear and bare.

The popular media are very selective in the use of Establishment sources and the Internet can

be hardly much better. A lot of us regular Internet users go to sources like David Emerys

sometimes reliable Urban Legends website http://urbanlegends.about.com/ - often useful in

debunking those silly serial Email hoaxes and Web mythology. But wed be wasting our time in

the case of a search for facts about aspartame, because Emery parrots the FSANZ standard

position on aspartame, demonstrating the truth of Alexander Popes famous advice A little

knowledge is a dangerous thing. Emery even piles ignorance on top of ignorance by placing

the website of a leading aspartame manufacturer, the Japanese food additives company,

Ajinomoto (sub- contractor in production to US corporates Monsanto/NutraSweet), as a prime

source for politically correct aspartame information!

The oldest trick in the propaganda book is to denigrate an information source and the

supporters of aspartame use universally condemn the Internet for the way it displays ALL the
known information on aspartame toxicity. Its a bit like criticising your local library because it

carries Mills & Boon romance novels! Because of the huge number of people now actively

agitating against aspartame use in the United States there are a large number of Internet

websites and organisations opposing the product based in that country and a huge number of

recorded aspartame-poisoning case histories with supporting medical data. From just two

anti-aspartame websites in 1996, Google.com was listing over 80,000 hits by October 2001.

Activism in Australia over aspartame has been negligible, however, although popular

Australian medical writer, Dr Sandra Cabot, has dealt with the subject and how to de-tox from

aspartame in her Liver Diet series of books and Sue Dengates Australian food allergy activist

group, the Food Intolerance Network (Website: www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info) lists

aspartame among the huge list of other problem-causing chemical additives available in our

supermarkets.

DORway.com is one of the most comprehensive and reliable sites, as will be apparent from

this story. Founded by the late David Rietz, who was himself an aspartame victim, it is the

official information arm of the indefatigable Betty Martinis Mission Possible, which has been

battling aspartame and its supporters and suppliers for two decades. Monsanto, who bought

aspartame patent owners Searle in 1985, have been trying to find ways of closing the website

down since 1996 and their law and PR firms have visited the site thousands of times in the

search of evidence for a product defamation court case similar to the notorious one mounted

by McDonalds against the McLibel Two in London in the late 90s.

That the case against aspartame is bulletproof is evident from the fact that neither Monsanto,

the NutraSweet Corporation (the Monsanto subsidiary now manufacturing aspartame) nor

companies like Coca Cola and Wrigleys have ever dared prosecute any of their critics. The fate

of McDonalds in the McLibel suit, where all the contentions of health damage were proven,

has acted as a warning to the international corporates against raising a hornets nest.

The fact is, of course, that the most damning items of evidence against aspartame are in the

thousands of pages of evidence arguing against its approval written by a long list of reputable

medical doctors and scientists, some of which has been sworn testimony before the US Senate

and a large body of which is out in the public arena and open for all to inspect (see

www.dorway.com). A significant volume of this evidence comes from the FDA itself, until it

was bought out by the White House Reagan administration under chemical industry pressure

from the present US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, from his position as CEO of

manufacturer, G.D. Searle.

As will be apparent later in this piece, the current of litigation is now heading in quite the

opposite direction - against the long list of companies headed by Monsanto and its

NutraSweet Corporation, who have been poisoning the planets population since aspartames

approval in 1981. Donald Rumsfelds name, normally associated with his role in the war in

Iraq, figures prominently in court papers.

Science warnings ignored

Im not inventing new alarmist science on aspartame in this tale of corruption and

mismanagement to prove some odd geeky theory about aspartame, either, although FSANZ

and the substantial pro-aspartame faction in Australia who all gain from steady aspartame

sales, love to demonise any adverse criticism of aspartame - as they will with this one - as the

work of an eccentric minority. The elementary chemistry involved in aspartames breakdown

into the highly toxic poisons, aspartic acid (around 40%), Phenylalanine, (around 50%), and

Methanol (10%) in the human body is part of ordinary science being taught in universities and

medical schools all round the world and the critics havent been able to write their Flat Earth

theories into the chemistry text books yet.

Look in the pages of a standard modern reference work like respected neurosurgeon Russell

Blaylocks Excitotoxins The Taste that Kills (Health Press, Santa Fe, 1997) and the clinical

details of what happens to the brain and the bodys nervous system under an assault from

aspartame is spelt out in detail.

As a neurosurgeon, writes Dr Blaylock, I see the devastating effects a brain tumour has, not

only on its victim, but on the victims family as well. To think that there is even a reasonable

doubt that aspartame can induce brain tumours in the American population is frightening.

And to think that the FDA has lulled them into a false sense of security is a monumental

crime. (2)

Critics occasionally try to demonise Dr Blaylocks criticisms of aspartame, attempting to imply

that he has some odd, out-of-the- mainstream theories, but Dr Blaylock has a reputation as

an internationally-recognised neurosurgeon and cites the peer-reviewed papers of 493

scientific studies in support of his contention that neuro- poisons like aspartame and

monosodium glutamate (vegetable protein/hydrolysed vegetable protein, etc) are causing

profound, long- term damage to human health. His critics carefully avoid tackling his

extensive review of the actual test data that preceded aspartames approval by the FDA, where

Dr Blaylock analyses in detail precisely how G.D.Searle falsified data and tried to hide the fact

that rats fed aspartame suffered grand mal seizures, died and suffered from cancer in
unprecedented numbers.

Food safety regulatory agencies like our own FSANZ (3) refuse to analyse this crucial original

research data, dismissing it in favour of the favourable reports on aspartame safety fabricated

by the huge team of scientists and consultants who owe their living to the aspartame industry.

(4)

Dr Blaylock is particularly concerned that two categories of citizen - the very young with their

developing brains and the very old, with deteriorating brains and nervous systems - are both

particularly vulnerable to damage from any chemical like aspartame, which specifically targets

the nervous system.

Reporting to a medical discussion group of the prestigious British medical journal, the Lancet,

Dr Blaylock noted that the US National Collaborative Study for Maternal PKU has

recommended that during pregnancy blood Phe (phenylalanine) should not exceed 6mg/dl.

This means that 14% of the general public could exceed this level when consuming high

intakes of aspartame and that 5% of normal people could exceed 10mg/dl. One in fifty

persons carries a heterozygous gene for PKU (hypersensitivity to phenylalanine - ED). Up to

35% of such unfortunate individuals, and their babies, would be at risk without knowing it.

Especially, since the babies brain levels would even exceed that of the mother. With the

complexity of the central nervous system it would be irresponsible for the FDA to allow the

widespread selling of aspartame without further independent study of the neurophysiological,

neurobehavioral and neurochemical effects of high intakes of this drug at all ages using

chronic studies. I think it is foolish to ignore the complaints of millions of individuals

reporting difficulties with this substance. Russell L. Blaylock Neurosurgeon. (5)

The implications behind his statement are that tens of thousands of children are being born

suffering brain damage in varying degrees and their growth and development is being stunted

all in defence of corporate profiteering. Under these circumstances it is hard to understand

how FSANZ regulators can sleep in their beds at night. Dr Blaylocks concerns are shared by a

long list of other medical authorities whose specific criticisms are listed on www.dorway.com

We really have no excuses when it comes to the obvious dangers of this product. It was

reviewed as a possible biochemical warfare agent by the Pentagon in a list submitted to

Congress prior to the accidental discovery of its sweetener action. In 1969, Dr. Harry Waisman

studied the effects of aspartame on primates, and seven infant monkeys were fed the chemical

in milk. One died, five others had Grand Mal seizures. These findings were deleted from

Searles report to the FDA. MIT researchers surveyed 80 people who suffered brain seizures
after eating or drinking products with aspartame, and the US Community Nutrition Institute

states: These 80 cases meets the FDAs own definition of an imminent hazard to the public

health, which requires the FDA to expeditiously remove a product from the market.

This sad litany is repeated again and again in scientific reports and medical case histories, but

despite all this, by 1985 G.D.Searle and Monsantos NutraSweet Corporation (Yes, Monsanto

was in there!) had cranked out over 400,000 tonnes of aspartame, NutraSweet was in over

9,000 foods by 1997 and on nearly every restaurant table even in Australia. The irony is that

the two things aspartame is most often marketed for, diabetes and weight loss, are actually

made significantly worse by ingesting the substance.

According to Dr. H. J. Roberts (a leading US critic of the product and author of the recently

released medical text, ASPARTAME DISEASE - AN IGNORED EPIDEMIC) after summarising 58

diabetic aspartame reactors, I now advise ALL patients with diabetes and hypoglycaemia to

avoid aspartame products. The Dr Mercola website (www.mercola.com), another reliable

source of holistic healing information, carries regular updates on the dangers of aspartame

consumption, plus hints on how to de-toxify from the product.

Dieters, a specific target group for aspartame use, need to know that aspartame triggers a

craving for carbohydrates, hardly the reaction desired by those trying to lose kilos. In fact if

you want to INCREASE weight and endanger your health aspartame is the ideal route to take.

The FDA has received more than 10,000 consumer complaints over aspartame, approximately

80% of all complaints about food additives since being introduced to the market. But FSANZ

states on its website that aspartame has an established history of safe use, which is a bit like

saying Osama bin Laden is well-intentioned.

Politics of aspartame

Of course the main reason aspartame is approved in Australia is because aspartame is

approved in the United States. Aspartame is a heavily politicised issue because it is a major

American corporate profit base worth billions of dollars and, as every Australian adult should

know by now, we usually bend over backwards to please Uncle Sam. Its good politics.

Monsanto and the corporate chemical industry have helped put every American president in

power since the 2nd World War and good relations with the USA means keeping American

corporates happy and ensuring their products pass through the Australian regulatory process

virtually automatically providing they have the FDA stamp of approval.

FSANZ deny this, of course, but then, they also deny that aspartame carries any health risks.
Arguing the issue with them is a bit like trying to promote the Earth as a sphere to the Flat

Earth Society.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going, however. Aspartame is, in fact, a prime case

for direct consumer action. But first you need to know exactly what youre dealing with. The

FDA approval process for aspartame is a key issue in understanding why aspartame got

approved for use in Australia and the story is every bit as tortuous as trying to figure out who

really killed US President J. F. Kennedy.

The current US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, is a central player in the aspartame

approval drama, funnily enough, and the full story of what happened is like an episode out of

The Sopranos, but Ill try to keep it brief.

Its January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan, a former B-grade Hollywood actor takes

office as U.S. President. Hes sailed into the White House on a huge raft of election funding

from corporate America and G. D. Searle in particular and the word is out that he will not

forget his friends. Donald Rumsfeld, former Ford White House Chief of Staff, is G.D. Searles

president and a firm Reagan favourite. Rumsfeld has been greasing Republican palms all

round Washington and telling the Searle sales force he would call in all his markers and that

no matter what, he would see to it that aspartame would be approved that year. (6)

That same day G.D.Searle reapply to the FDA for the approval of aspartame despite the fact

that up-to-date this approval has been denied on grounds of aspartames proven toxicity. No

problem. Reagan and Rumsfeld already have a staunch Republican hack ready for the job as

new FDA Commissioner - Arthur Hayes, who in short order overrules the FDAs own board of

inquiry who have refused to approve aspartame and gives the product the FDAs stamp of

approval.

Its well-known in Washington circles, however, that aspartame is not just any old political

FDA approval, but is, in fact, a general signal to corporate America that Reagan means

business and Big Business at that. The signal in particular, tells Big Business that from now on

all the brakes are off, tricky regulations about silly things like public health and safety are

gone for good and Lets get together and make money, boys!

Arthur Hayes is quickly bored by his job at the FDA, at any rate, and before too long goes off

to work for notorious PR flack firm Burson- Marsteller, who just coincidentally, you

understand, happen to be retained by G.D. Searle! At about the same time, Federal attorney

Sam Skinner, whos been assigned to prosecute Searle for fraudulent tests in their original
aspartame application, gets an offer he cant refuse from - Guess who! - Searles lawyers!

and goes off to work for them for a reputed $US1,000 per day, effectively sabotaging the

whole Federal case and, of course, effectively ending any litigation threat against Searle for its

deliberately falsified aspartame data.

The whole debauched exercise is the start of a long-standing criticism of US federal

authorities - and the FDA in particular - that they have a revolving door relationship with

G.D. Searle, Monsanto and the chemical industry in general. And, of course, as far as FSANZ is

concerned this whole shoddy exercise just never happened. But it did, and its recorded in US

Senate records. (6)

Thats the thing about aspartame: its a bit like the key to Pandoras Box of stored evils - once

we start opening the box all hell breaks loose!

Recently, good old FSANZ has finalised approval of several knock-offs from aspartame,

including neotame, an aspartame look-alike which Monsanto/NutraSweet say is safer for

phenylketonurics. Actually this is PR drivel. Dr Roberts and others in the long list of medical

critics say the clinical effects from neotame will be the same as aspartame and the only reason

Monsanto/NutraSweet are changing the formulation is because aspartames patent rights have

run out and the neotame formulation gives them patent control again and thus monopoly and

price control. FSANZ in this case have done one better than the FDA by giving their rubber

stamp ahead of the FDA to yet one more Monsanto industrial poison (Monsanto have also

given the world the popular herbicide Roundup/glyphosate, recently linked to birth defects,

cancer and hormone disruption).

In my own regular dealings with the food regulators it always seems were singing from

different hymnbooks when it comes down to the actual science indicating hazard or safety for

aspartame. However, when you can get to check what the regulators are actually reading you

invariably discover they are sticking to the data produced by the aspartame industry or its

paid minions in the science community.

Substantive evidence of this trend was produced by Professor Ralph Walton of Northeastern

Ohio Universitys College of Medicine, who pointed out on the popular US TV programme 60

Minutes (Dec 29, l996) that he had done peer reviewed research showing that of 90

INDEPENDENT studies on aspartame 83 out of 90 or 92% identified a problem. Of the seven

non-industry studies attesting to aspartames safety, six were studies from the FDA and one

was from a literature review almost exclusively dealing with industry-sponsored research. Dr.

Walton noted at the time that As the role of the FDA in the question of aspartame safety, has
been controversial and allegations were made of a conflict of interest on the part of the FDA

Commissioner at the time of aspartames approval, one could argue that the FDA studies

should not be considered truly independent. If these studies are excluded, along with the

literature review focusing only on NutraSweet industry funded research, then 100% of the truly

independently funded research demonstrated some type of adverse reaction to NutraSweet

(aspartame). (4)

His warning words on the aspartame disaster, now well into its third decade on our food

chain, are echoed by a long list of eminent scientists whose peer-reviewed papers and

interviews on the subject of aspartame toxicity are listed in detail on the www.dorway.com

website.

FSANZ naturally places its confidence in aspartame safety on pro- industry research and the

shonky reports from the EU and UN Codex coming from committees loaded with food industry

representatives. When it is challenged on its aspartame safety data it always quotes the

European Unions special whitewash report on aspartame instigated by Tony Blairs UK

Government - Opinion of the European Commission, Scientific Committee on Food: Update

on the Safety of Aspartame / E951 (SCF 2002) (7), which reads like something out of the

notoriously shonky Blair brief on the Iraq weapons of mass destruction scam - another piece

of work with the stamp of Donald Rumsfeld all over it.

The EU Opinion naturally reported that aspartame was safe because two-thirds of the science

committees members earn a significant part of their living as scientific consultants to the

aspartame-using food industry. The United Nations body concerned with international food

safety, the Codex Alimentarius - is similarly dominated by aspartame- user industry groups

and their concerns due to an in-built bias in its constitution that dictates it deal solely with

industry groups, politicians and national regulators. In these circumstances genuine scientific

and consumer concerns get short shrift and aspartame carries on its path of destruction.

What we all need to keep focussed on, of course, is that our bureaucrats and politicians have a

long, long history of support for blue asbestos, DDT, lead, and Agent Orange poisoning, as

the historic record demonstrates. It took Australian governments and their regulatory officials

and experts decades to accept that these toxins actually damaged human health. Little

wonder, then, at their staunch defence of aspartame and a long list of other harmful synthetic

food additives in the food chain. (8)

References:
1. Dr. Woodrow C. Monte, Aspartame: Methanol and the Public Health, Journal of Applied

Nutrition, Volume 36, 1984, No. 1, page 42- 54.

2. Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins; The Taste That Kills, Health Press, Santa Fe, N.M.

87504, 1994, page 213.

3. FSANZ was formerly known under the rubric of ANZFA (Australia New Zealand Food

Authority), but changed its name, according to popular Internet myth, because when you do a

spell-check the suggested correction for ANZFA is always unsafe! Hence my preference for

FSANZ/UNSAFE. Lets put the responsibility for this poison where it belongs.

4. Walton, RG., Northeastern Ohio Universitys College of Medicine, Survey of Aspartame

Studies: Correlation of Outcome and Funding Sources, outlined on the popular US TV

programme 60 Minutes (Dec 29, l996) and provided to Ed Metcalfe for the purposes of his

story Sweet Talking, published in The Ecologist, Vol 30, No 4 June 2000.

5. British medical journal, the Lancet, July 29, 1999,

6. Gordon, Gregory, 1987. NutraSweet: Questions Swirl, UPI Investigative Report, 10/12/87.

Reprinted in US Senate report (1987, page 483-510).

7. See http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/ for the full report.

8. See Bill Stathams Australian guide to food additives, The Chemical Maze, listing nearly

1,000 potentially harmful chemicals in our food chain. Available from Possibility.Com, P O Box

789, Ringwood, Victoria 3134.

CHECK THESE RESOURCES FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

Web Site - www.dorway.com and www.wnho.net , the Aspartame Toxicity Center,

www.holisticmed.com/aspartame

A new video exposing the aspartame industry is Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, available by

clicking here to email , Tel (USA) - 520 - 624 -9710. Also the medical text on aspartame:

Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, available online from www.sunsentpress.com or

Tel (USA) 1 800 827 7991 H. J. Roberts, M.D. (along with other books and tapes). Dr Roberts

book contains a chapter on trial lawyers and drug interactions since aspartame is a severely

neurotoxic drug. See also books on aspartame by neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, MD,

Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills, and Health & Nutrition Secrets To Save Your Life. See

websites above for details. The latter book tells aspartame victims what they have to avoid and

why, and explains how a victim can re-build their immune system. Dr. Blaylock also has a

book on Cancer Strategies. With aspartame having caused so many tumours in original studies

this is a helpful resource.

Chris Wheeler is former president of the Soil & Health Association, Australasias oldest organic
agriculture lobby group