:::A Holy Dose of Aspartame:::
Cap'n Billy
Nutrapoison Part One by Alex Constantine
I recognized my two selves: a crusading idealist
and a cold, granitic believer in the law of the jungle.
Edgar Monsanto Queeny, Monsanto chairman, 1943-63,
"The Spirit of Enterprise", 1934."
The FDA is ever mindful to refer to aspartame, widely known as NutraSweet,
as a "food additive"-never a "drug." A "drug" on the label of a Diet Coke
might discourage the consumer. And because aspartame is classified a food
additive, adverse reactions are not reported to a federal agency, nor is
continued safety monitoring required by law.1
NutraSweet is a non-nutritive sweetener. The brand name is misnomer. Try
Non-NutraSweet.
Food additives seldom cause brain lesions, headaches, mood alterations,
skin polyps, blindness, brain tumors, insomnia and depression, or erode
intelligence and short-term memory. Aspartame, according to some of the most
capable scientists in the country, does. In 1991 the National Institutes of
Health, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, published a
bibliography, *Adverse Effects of Aspartame*, listing not less than 167 reasons
to avoid it.2
Aspartame is an rDNA derivative, a combination of two amino acids (long
supplied by a pair of Maryland biotechnology firms: Genex Corp. of Rockville
and Purification Engineering in Baltimore.)3
The Pentagon once listed it in an inventory of prospective biochemical warfare
weapons submitted to Congress.4 But instead of poisoning enemy populations,
the "food additive" is currently marketed as a sweetening agent in some 1200
food products.
In light of the chemo-warfare implications, the pasts of G.D. Searle and
aspartame are ominous. Established in 1888 on the north side of Chicago, G.D.
Searle has long been a fixture of the medical establishment. The company
manufactures everything from prescription drugs to nuclear imaging optical
equipment.5
Directors of G.D. Searle include such geopolitical heavy-hitters as Andre M.
de Staercke, Reagan's ambassador to Belgium and Reuben Richards, an executive
vice president at Citibank. Also Arthur Wood, the retired CEO of Sears, Roebuck
& C disgorged by the clan of General Robert E. Wood, wartime chairman of the
America First Committee.6 America Firsters, organized by native Nazis cloaked
as isolationists, were quietly financed by the likes of Sullivan &
Cromwell's Allen Dulles and Edwin Webster of Kidder, Peabody.7
Until the acquisition by Monsanto in 1985, the firm's chairman was William
L. Searle, a Harvard graduate, Naval reservist and-a grim irony in view of
aspartame's adverse effects-an officer in the Army Chemical Corps in the early
1950s, when the same division tested LSD on groups of human subjects in concert
with the CIA.8
The chief of the Chemical Warfare Division at this time was Dr. Laurence Laird
Layton, whose son Larry was convicted for the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan at
Jonestown ("Come to the pavilion! What a legacy! "). Jonestown, of course,
bore a remarkable likeness to a concentration camp, and kept a full store of
pharmaceutical drugs. (The Jonestown pharmacy was stocked with a variety of
behavior control drugs: qualudes, valium, morphine, demerol and 11,000 doses
of thorazine-a better supply, in fact, than the Guyanese government's own, not
to mention a surfeit of cyanide.9)
Dr. Layton was married to the daughter of Hugo Phillip, a German banker and
stockbroker representing the likes of Siemens & Halske, the makers of cyanide
for the Final Solution, and I.G. Farben, the manufacturer of a lethal nerve
gas put to the same purpose.10 Dr. Layton,a Quaker, developed a form of
purified uranium used to set off the Manhattan Project's first self-sustaining
chain reaction at the University of Chicago in 1942 by his wife's German-born
Uncle, Dr. James Franck. At Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Dr. Layton
concentrated his efforts, as did I.G. Farben, on the development of nerve
gasses.11
Dr. Layton later defended his participation in the Army's chemical warfare
section:
"You can blow people to bits with bombs, you can shoot them with shells,
you can atomize them with atomic bombs, but the same people think there's
something terrible about poisoning the air and letting people breath it.
Anything having to do with gas warfare, chemical warfare, has this taint
of horror on it, even if you only make people vomit."12
Nazis and chemical warfare are recurring themes in the aspartame story.
Currently, the chief patent holder of the sweetener is the Monsanto Co.,
based in St. Louis. In 1967, Monsanto entered into a joint venture with I.G.
Farbenfabriken, the aforementioned financial core of the Hitler regime and the
key supplier of poison gas to the Nazi racial extermination program. After the
Holocaust, the German chemical firm joined with American counterparts in
the development of chemical warfare agents and founded the "Chemagrow
Corporation" in Kansas City, Missouri, a front that employed German and
American specialists on behalf of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps.13
Dr. Otto Bayer, I.G.'s research director, had a binding relationship with
Monsanto chemists.14 In the post-war period, Dr. Bayer developed and tested
chemical warfare agents with Dr. Gerhard Schrader, the Nazi concocter of
Tabun, the preferred nerve gas of the SS. Schrader was also an organophosphate
pioneer, and tested the poison on populated areas of West Germany under the
guise of killing insects.15 Schrader's experiments reek suspiciously of
the ongoing aerial application of malathion-developed by Dr. Schrader, a
recruit of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service when Germany surrendered-in
present-day Southern Califonia.16
Another bridge to I.G. Farben was Monsanto's acquisition of American Viscose,
long owned by the England's Courtauld family. As early as 1928, the U.S.
Commerce Department issued a report critical of the Courtauld's ties to I.G.
Farben and the Nazi party.17 Incredibly, George Courtauld was handed an
appointment as director of personnel for England's Special Operations Executive,
the wartime intelligence service, in 1940.18 A year later, with the exhaustion
of British military financial reserves, American Viscose, worth $120 million
was put on the block in New York. The desperate British treasury received less
than half that amount from the sale, brokered by Siegmund Warburg, among others.
19 Monsanto acquired the company in 1949.20
The Nazi connection to Monsanto crops up again on the board of directors with
John Reed, a former crony of "Putzi" Hanfstangl, a Harvard-bred emigre to
Germany who talked Hitler out of committing suicide in 1924 and contributed
to the financing of *Mein Kampf*. 21 Reed is also chairman of Citibank and long
a confederate of the CIA. According to a lawsuit filed by San Francisco
attorney Melvin Belli, Reed was an instigator, with Ronald Reagan, James Baker
and Margaret Thatcher, of the "Purple Ink Document," a plan to finance CIA
covert operations with wartime Japanese gold stolen from a buried Philippine
hoard.22
Other covert military connections to Monsanto include Dr. Charles Allen Thomas,
chairman of the Monsanto Board, 1965[?]. Dr. Thomas directed a group of
scientists during WW Il in the refinement of plutonium for use in the atomic
bomb. In the postwar period Monsanto operated Tennessee's Oak Ridge National
Laboratories for the Manhattan Project.23 (Manhattan gestated with the Oak
Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies, where Lethal doses of radiation were tested
on 200 unwary cancer patients, turning them into "nuclear calibration devices"
gratis the AEC and NASA, until 1974. 24) Nazi scientists and a 7,000 ton
stockpile of uranium were delivered to the Project by its security and
counter-intelligence director, Col. Boris Pash, a G2 designate to the CIA's
Bloodstone program-and the *eminence grise* of PB/7, a clandestine Nazi unit
that, according to State Department records, conducted a regimen of political
assassinations and kidnappings in Europe and the Eastern bloc.25
Monsanto Director William Ruckelshaus was an acting director of the FBI under
Richard Nixon, a period in the Bureau s history marred by COINTELPRO outrages,
including assassinations. Nixon subsequently appointed Ruckelshaus to the
position of EPA director, a nagging irony given his ties to industry (Browning
Ferris and Cummins Engine Co.). CIA counterintelligentsia on the Monsanto board
include Stansfield Turner, a former Director of Central Intelligence, and Earle
H. Harbison, an Agency information specialist for nineteen years.
Harbison is also a director of Merrill Lynch, and thus raises the spectre of
CIA drug dealing. ln 1984 President Ronald Reagan's Commission on Organized
Crime concluded that Merrill Lynch employed couriers "observed transferring
enormous amounts of cash through investment houses and banks in New York City
to Italy and Switzerland. Tens of millions of dollars in heroin sales in this
country were transferred over seas." Merrill Lynch invested the drug proceeds
in the New bullion market before making the offshore transfers.26
As might be expected in view of Monsanto's Nazi, chemical w are and CIA ties,
NutraSweet is a can of worms unprecedented in the American food industry. The
history of the product is laden with flawed and fabricated research findings
and, when necessary to further the product along, blatant lies-the basis of
FDA approval and the incredulity of independent medical researchers.
Senator Metzenbaum described the FDA as "the handmaiden'' of the drug industry
in 1985, but she comports under all regimes. In the Clinton administration for
example, Mike Taylor was graced with the position of deputy director of the FDA.
Taylor is a cousin of Tipper Gore, Vice President Albert Gore's wife, and once an
outside counsel to Monsanto. (Gore voted with Senate conservatives in 1985
against aspartame labelling.)
Under the tutelage of the Clinton administration, one Chicago reporter quipped,
the FDA strictly enforces one "unwritten" violation of law-failure to bribe.
Granitic Believers
G.D. Sear!e, the pharmaceutical firm that introduced NutraSweet, worked
symbiotically with federal and congressional officials, bribed investigators
when violations of law were exposed, *anything* to move aspartame to
market. As far back as 1969, an internal Searle "strategy memo" concluded the
company must obtain FDA approval to outpace firms competing for the artificial
sweetener market. Another memo in December 1970 urged that FDA officials were
to be "brought into a subconscious spirit of participation" with Searle.27
To that end, with enormous profits at stake, the pharmaceutical house set out
on a long struggle to transform the Pentagon's biochemical warfare agent into
"the taste Mother Nature intended".
The official story is that aspartame was discovered in 1966 by a scientist
developing an ulcer drug (not a "food additive"). Supposedly he discovered,
upon carelessly licking his fingers that they tasted sweet. Thus was the
chemicals industry blessed with a successor to saccharine, the coal-tar
derivative that foundered eight years later under the pressure of cancer
concerns.
Aspartame found early opposition in consumer attorney James Turner, author
of *The Chemical Feast* and a former Nader's Raider. At his own expense,
Turner fought approval for ten years, basing his argument on aspartame's
potential side effects, particularly on children. His concern was shared by
Dr. John Olney, Professor of neuropathology and psychiatry at Washington School
of Medicine in St. Louis. Dr. Olney found that aspartame, combined with MSG
seasoning, increased the odds of brain damage in children.
Other studies have found that children are especially vulnerable to its toxic
effects, a measure of the relation between consumption and body weight. The FDA
determined in 1981, when the sweetener was approved, that the maximum projected
intake of Aspartame is 50 milligrams a day per kilogram of body weight. A child
of 66 pounds would consume about 23 milligrams by imbibing four cans of Diet
Coke. The child might also conceivably down an aspartame-flavored snack or two,
nearing the FDA's projected maximum daily intake.29 Dr. William Partridge, a
professor of neuroendocrine regulation at MIT, told *Common Cause* in August
1984 that it wouldn't be surprising if a child-"confronted with aspartame
contained in iced tea chocolate milk, milk shakes, chocolate pudding pie, Jello,
ice cream and numerous other products" -consumed 50 milligrams per kilogram in a
day.
Internally, aspartame breaks down into its constituent amino acids and methanol,
which degrades into formaldehyde. The FDA announced in 1984 that "no evidence"
has been found to establish that the methanol byproduct reaches toxic levels,
claiming that "many fruit juices contain higher levels of the natural
compound."30 But the _Medical World News_ had already reported in 1978 that
the methanol content of aspartame is 1,000 times greater than most foods under
FDA control.31
NutraSweet, the "good stuff" of sentimental adverts, is a truly insidious
product. According to independent trials, aspartame intake is shown by animal
studies to alter brain chemicals affecting behavior. Aspartame's effects on the
brain led Richard Wurtman, an MIT neuroscientist, to the discovery, as recorded
in _The New England Journal of Medicine_ (No. 309, 1983), that the sweetener
defeats its purpose as a diet aid, since high doses may instill a craving
for calorie-laden carbohydrates. One of his pilot studies found that the
NutraSweet-carbohydrate combination increases the "sweetener's effect on brain
composition." Searle officials denigrated Wurtman 's findings, but the
American Cancer Society has since confirmed the irony-after tracking 80,000
women for six years-that "among women who gained weight, artificial sweetener
users gained more than those who didn't use the products," as reported in
_Medical Self-Care_ (387). (Since his battle with G.D. Searle, Wurtman founded
Interneuron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the producer of a sports drink that enhances
athletic performance, and a weight loss drug marketed in over 40 countries.
Wurtman's share of the company, established in 1989, was worth $10 million by
1992.32
Even more daunting are the findings of Dr. Paul Spiers, a neuropsychologist at
Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, that aspartame use can depress intelligence. For
this reason, he selected experimental subjects with a history of consuming it
but unaware that they might be suffering ill effects. The subjects were given
NutraSweet in capsules of the FDA's allowable limit. Spiers was alarmed to
discover that they developed "cognitive deficits.'' One of the tests required
recall of square patterns and alphabetical sequences, becoming increasingly
more difficult. The test is challenging, but most people improve as they learn
how it is done. The aspartame users, however, did not improve. "Some frankly
showed a reverse pattern," said Spiers."33
Aspartame has been shown to erode short-term memory. At the May, 1985 hearings
on NutraSweet, Louisiana Senator Russell Long related a bizarre anecdote:
SENATOR LONG: I have received a letter recently from a person who is well
known to me and whose word is impeccable, as far as I am
concerned. This person told me that she had been dieting and
she had been using diet drinks with aspartame in it. She said
she found her memory was going. She seemed to be completely
losing her memory. When she would meet people whom she knew
intimately, she could not recall what their name was, or even
who they were. She could not recall a good bit of that which
was going on about her to the extent that she was afraid she
was losing her mind. . . In due course, someone suggested
that it might be this NutraSweet, so she stopped using it
and her memory came back and her mind was restored. Senator
Howard Metzenbaum replied that he had received "a number of
letters from doctors reporting similar developments. . .
There have been hundreds of incidents of people who have
suffered loss of memory, headaches, dizziness, and other
neurological symptoms which they feel are related to
aspartame."34
Senator Orrin Hatch, a hidebound archconservative and NutraSweet advocate,
downplayed criticism of the sugar substitute. "Some people have lost their
memory after drinking a variety of things," he argued. ''The bottom line is
this: The studies supporting aspartame's approval have been examined and
reexamined. More than enough sound, valid studies exist to demonstrate
aspartame's safety."
Hatch of Utah, reports the _Wall Street Journal_, has "given his strong support
of the pharmaceutical industries."35 So have the "Hatchlings." David Kessler,
FDA Commissioner under presidents Bush and Clinton, was once an aide to Orrin
Hatch. Hatch's former campaign manager and aide, C. McClain Haddow, was
sentenced to prison for conflict-of-interest charges arising from his work as
a Reagan administration health official. And Thomas Parry, Hatch's former chief
of staff, has carved a sumptuous life for himself as a Republican fund-raiser
and lobbyist with clients in the pharmaceutical industry. All told, Parry
represents 30 clients, including Eli Lilly, Warner-Lambert, and
Johnson & Johnson, not to mention ranking defense firms and the Bahamas
government. Parry's pharmaceutical clients have enriched Senator Hatch's
campaign coffers, and in turn Hatch lavishes his attentions on them.
By the time Orrin Hatch was stumping for NutraSweet in the U.S. Senate, the
Center for Disease Control in Atlanta had received 600 letters complaining of
NutraSweet's adverse effects. The National Soft Drink Association (NSDA)
had them too. "There have been hundreds of reports from around the country
suggesting a possible relationship between their consumption of NutraSweet and
subsequent symptoms including headaches, aberrational behavior, slurred speech,
etc." FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes, appointed by Ronald Reagan in
April, 1981 (moving the _New York Times_ to observe that "some industry
officials consider Dr. Hayes more sympathetic to their viewpoints than past
holders of the office"), considered such complaints "anecdotal.''
Of course, like scores of other conservatives roaming the executive branch in
the 1980s, the ethics of Arthur Hull Hayes were entirely malleable-not only
did he approve a product based on studies that were "scientifically lacking in
design and execution," according to a report issued by _Science Times_ in
February 1985, but upon leaving the FDA he took the post of senior medical
consultant for Burson-Marsteller, the public relations firm retained by G.D.
Searle.37
Burson-Marsteller, a huge public relations conglomerate, swelled in the 1980s
by leveraging smaller competitors -including Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelley,
a lobbying firm best known for influence peddling along the Beltway-presently
outsizing even the Hill & Knowlton empire. Typical in the aspartame story
are Burson-Marsteller's links to the intelligence community and rightwing
operatives of the GOP. Thomas Devereaux Bell, Jr., an executive officer of the
firm, is the former chairman of the Center for naval Analysis in Alexandria,
Virginia. Bell was also the executive director of Ronald Reagan's Inaugural
Ball Committee (in which capacity he ushered in the likes of Licio Gelli, head
of P2, the notorious Italian secret society). Bell's career in Washington began
in 1971 as a deputy director of Richard Nixon's Committee to ReElect the
President. He went on to serve as an administrative aide to Senator William
Brock and the Reagan transition team.38
--
Cap'n Billy: Generally right twice a day.
John F. Winston
You probably may post for the rest of your life but you'll
never top this postings. Thanks for having the courage to
tell the truth.
John Winston.