Every morning it's the same for me: I go into my bathroom and pretend I don't see that little square white box thing with the large dial. I devoutly ignore it while I brush my teeth, and when I dry my hands on the towel hanging just above it, I fix my eyes on a shower curtain butterfly—or anything else to keep from facing the nagging thought that I should mount those damned bathroom scales and get another dose of bad news.
Having left the bathroom in happy ignorance, I make my way to the office where I instinctively undo the middle button on my shirt and settle in my chair for day. After the obligatory cold tea and snacks throughout the morning, by 11 I'm ready for lunch. Plopping onto a stool at my local diner, I have to face the conscience thing again—or is it willpower? (I can never keep those two things separate!) Should I order a green, leafy salad covered with some kind of low-fat tasteless slop, or a chicken-fried-steak-gravy-smothered-mashed-potato plate? Thirty minutes later, having wiped up the last traces of gravy with the last crust of toasted buttered bread, all I can do for my battered conscience and/or willpower is to thank God that at least I use NutraSweet in my iced tea drinks!
It's a sad fact that throughout our lives we have to duck and dodge on an obstacle course of deceit and danger. We trust a sales pitch, and we get stung. We trust a politician and a year later watch as he's carted off to prison. Even in the time of our most devastating needs we have to duck and dodge liars and thieves. Certainly this is nothing new. From the time the first human learned to utter the first syllable, the lesson has been "buyer beware." In no other industry has this warning been more fitting than the billion dollar diet industry. Not only do we have to duck and dodge the quack quick-loss cures, but we have to also beware of the billion-dollar drug pushing companies that kill with their slickly-advertised miracle pills.
It was to my horror that I—a think-I've-heard-it-all cynic—learned of a deadly conspiracy of greed that involved both political corruption at the highest levels of federal government and the biggest names in corporate America. Worse still was that this conspiracy aimed its big guns at a segment of our population that is most vulnerable, since they are desperate to trust and believe in miracle cures. What I discovered involved those little packets of NutraSweet that had been sweetening my iced tea and soothing my conscience when I lost my daily diet battle. It's not a pretty story, and I don't enjoy telling it, but it's one of those necessary evils that must be since keeping silent means devastating illness, despair and death.
Sweet Poison
The story of NutraSweet takes us back some three decades where we are going to meet some questionable characters who would eventually make their way into or with connections to the highest offices of the land. Specifically our story involves a chief among Washington, D.C.'s old boy net—President George W. Bush's former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Princeton educated Donny Rumsfeld began his career in 1958, when he became an assistant to U.S. Congressman Dave Dennison (R. Ohio). In 1962 Donny was elected by the people of Illinois to the U.S. House of Representatives. It was from that springboard that Donny dived right into the cesspool of D.C.'s old boy net wherein he wallowed until his disgrace and fall from the Bush regime in November 2006. That's nearly fifty years of double dealing in the heart of this nation, and Donny's resume is impressive! It includes President Richard Nixon, whom Donny served as an economic advisor; President Gerald Ford, whom he served as chief of staff and the youngest defense secretary in U.S. history.
When Jimmy Carter took the White House in 1976, Donny was out and needed a job for the interim. In March 1978 he became the CEO of the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle. Now Searle was rapidly going down the tubes, and desperately needed an old boy like Donny. Its biggest headache was an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for attempting to defraud the FDA into approving the chemical drug aspartame as a safe artificial sweetener when lab tests proved it was a neurotoxic, carcinogenic drug—which means Searle knew the drug was proven to cause cancer in the brain.
The FDA had not only banned aspartame as unsafe, but was going after Searle for forging test results. On January 10, 1977, the FDA formally requested that the U.S. Department of Justice convene a federal grand jury to determine if Searle should be criminally indicted for "concealing material facts and making false statements" with regard to its petition for aspartame approval.
For the average U.S. citizen, a federal grand jury is a big problem! Not so for a leading member of D.C.'s old boy net. When the temporarily-out-of-work Rumsfeld was hired as Searle's CEO, he vowed to "call in his markers," and get aspartame approved. The first order of business was to take care of the grand jury investigation, which was being led by U.S. Attorney Samuel Skinner. Who knows what transpired, but in the midst of the investigation Skinner left the Justice Department and took a job with Sidley & Austin, which was the law firm representing G. D. Searle, effectively meaning that Donny Rumsfeld's chief adversary would now be working for Donny Rumsfeld!
Former U.S. Attorney Skinner's replacement—William Conlon—then allowed the statute of limitations to run out on the case, and the grand jury disbanded without indicting G. D. Searle. William Conlon—the man who allowed the statute of limitations to run out—eventually was hired by Sidley & Austin, the law firm representing G. D. Searle, which means that he too, effectively went to work for Donny Rumsfeld.
Despite an inquiry by Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D. Ohio) into the whole stinking affair, and despite publicity in a Wall Street Journal article (Two Ex-U.S. Prosecutors' Roles in Case Against Searle Are Questioned in Probe by Andy Pasztor and Joe Davidson, Feb. 7, 1986), the matter finally faded into obscurity. www.dorway.com/wsiprosc.html
While all this was going on, Donny Rumsfeld's political fortunes were on the upswing. Donny, the former congressman from Skokie, former White House chief of staff, former secretary of defense and since January 1977 CEO and president of Searle, announced in a sales meeting that he is going to make a big push to get aspartame FDA approved within the year by using his political pull in Washington, rather than by scientific means.
After Jimmy Carter's defeat, Donny was appointed a member of Reagan's transitional team, and was one of those who hand-picked Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr. to become the new Food and Drug Administration Commissioner. According to The Washington Post, Dr. Hayes was, "one of a number of doctors who conducted drugs tests for the Army on volunteers to determine the effect of a mind-disorienting drug called CAR 301,060" at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Such a resume is frightening, but worse yet was the fact that Hayes had no experience with food additives.
The day after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, January 21, 1981, G. D. Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener. Reagan's new Rumsfeld-approved FDA commissioner, Dr. Hayes, appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry's decision. When the panel voted to uphold the aspartame ban as a cancer-causing danger, Hayes installed a sixth member, who then deadlocked the vote. Hayes personally broke the tie by voting in aspartame's favor. NutraSweet was now ready to be sold to an unsuspecting American public as FDA-approved.
What was Commissioner Hayes' reward for this duplicity? After being forced out of the FDA for seeming to take bribes, Dr. Hayes was hired by Burson-Marsteller, G. D. Searle's public relation firm (which also represented several of NutraSweet's major users). And the plot thickens. After 12 years at Sidley & Austin, now Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood, former U.S. prosecutor Sam Skinner was appointed to be President George H. W. Bush's transportation secretary and later became the elder President Bush's chief of staff. Sure; all of this was just good old D.C.-type business as usual for Donny Rumsfeld, Sam Skinner, Bill Conlon, Dr. Hayes and company, but it meant doom for hundreds of millions unsuspecting of aspartame users.
When G. D. Searle was absorbed by the giant Monsanto Company in 1985, Donny Rumsfeld reportedly received a $12 million bonus on his way out the door. And so, with his $12 million in pocket change, Donny went onto bigger and better things—like joining President George W. Bush in lying the American people into a Middle Eastern war for no other reason than pure profit for their handlers. But despite the hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths caused by Donny and George in that on-going travesty, Donny's most devastating legacy may well turn out to be mass aspartame poisoning.
Don Harkins of the Idaho Observer wrote an exposé on Donald Rumsfeld and aspartame titled "Rumsfeld's Disease A Politically-Induced Biochemical Disaster Of Global Proportions" (August 15, 2005). Harkins writes:
"Mission accomplished: Today some 9,000 commonly consumed products are laced with this weapon of mass misery and millions of people live with chronic illnesses linked to the artificial sweetener aspartame. [Found in such popular products as Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Snapple and Sugar Free Kool-Aid, sugar-free mints and chewing gums, all of which are consumed by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.] It is our belief at The Idaho Observer that if some guy named Parkinson can have a disease named after him, then Donald Rumsfeld ought to have his own disease, too. Hence the term Rumsfeld disease." Harkins goes on: "The aftermath: Within weeks of aspartame's approval for use in beverages, cans of diet sodas and other sweet drinks were on the market. To help sell Americans on using the artificial sweetener, intense advertising campaigns began programming the public to believe that sugar has lots of calories; calories make us fat and NutraSweet has no calories-therefore it won't make us fat.
"Based upon this almost universally-accepted oversimplification of biochemical reality, aspartame has enjoyed 22 years of marketplace success and is now in an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 commonly-consumed products in at least 100 countries."
In November 2006 Dr. Betty Martini, who has dedicated her life to warning people of the deadly consequences of aspartame, teamed with Don Harkins to write an article after Rumsfeld's fall from the current Bush Administration. Noting that aspartame, a known deadly poison, was nonetheless fed to our Gulf War troops, she writes:
"Aspartame is made up of three components: 1) Aspartic acid (an excitotoxin); 2) a methyl ester which immediately becomes methanol, then converts to formaldehyde and formic acid and; 3) phenylalanine, (a neurotoxin as an isolate) The molecule breaks down to diketopiperazine, a brain tumor agent. Aspartame breaks down at 86 degrees or moderate temperature. During the first Gulf War, soldiers were drinking Rumsfeld's poison by the pallet load in diet sodas sitting in the 120 degree Arabian son. As stated previously, aspartame (and its toxic byproducts) interacts with all drugs and vaccines. Corporate-neutral, non-government researchers believe that consumption of aspartame/ formaldehyde cocktails is likely a factor in the epidemic of 'Gulf War Illness' tragically affecting hundreds of thousands of Desert Storm veterans and their families. A Gulf War veteran named Geoffrey recently reported that what they had to drink were aspartame diet sodas and confirmed again the pallets were piled one on top of the other in the hot sun for weeks.
Geoffrey is young but his hair was gray due to aspartame-induced mitochondrial damage that helps you age. Aspartame is addictive due to the liberation of free methyl alcohol, also causing chronic methanol poisoning. This affects the dopamine system of the brain and causes the addiction. He was still using it. His vision was affected, as expected, because the methanol converts to formaldehyde and formic acid in the retina of the eye and destroys the optic nerve.
Prior to aspartame use he had not worn glasses. From headaches and blood pressure elevation to weight gain he is the typical aspartame victim. He is dizzy most of the time, and dizziness is #2 on the FDA list of 92 symptoms. He had no idea aspartame triggers these problems. His son is in Iraq and he planned to immediately warn him to abandon diet pop and Wrigley's gum. His best friend, a diet pop addict, was just found dead in a chair. He said, 'I was fighting for my country, and I try to help people, and my health has been destroyed.' This case is just one of millions of cases of Rumsfeld disease." (From the November 2006 Idaho Observer.)
According to researchers, the FDA has received over 10,000 complaints about aspartame compared to less than 4,000 complaints for all other consumer products combined! This is a staggering number considering that the FDA estimates that only one percent of all people who have bad reactions to a product actually bothers to report their experience. This fact tells us that there have been over one million bad reactions, but it also tells us that the stats will not include people who had bad reactions to aspartame but who did not know that their problems were caused by aspartame poisoning.
The story gets worse when one realizes that there is a safe all-natural calorie, carb-free sugar substitute available on the market. It's worse because the FDA—the same government "protector" of the public's welfare, whose continued support for aspartame can only be seen as a government conspiracy at the highest levels—will not allow the product to be marketed as a sugar substitute. Only by word of mouth has this sweetener made the rounds. The all-natural alternative to sugar is called stevia.
Stevia, (pronounced STEE-vee-ya, and marketed under trade names Bertoni, Stevia, Stevioside, Sweet Vibes, SweetLeaf, Honey Leaf) is derived from the plant known as Stevia rebaudiana. An extract of the stevia plant, stevioside, is about 250-300 times sweeter than sugar. Since the product can't be patented, there have been few studies carried out on stevia, the reason being money. No corporation is willing to spend the millions it takes to get stevia approved by the FDA, since the plant can be grown in people's backyards! Not surprising, the FDA decided to investigate stevia in 1991 at the request of "an anonymous" complaint. Investigating stevia as a though it were a drug, in short order the FDA labeled stevia as an "unsafe food additive" and banned its importation.
The story of stevia smacks of collusion between the FDA and the artificial sweetener industry, which has a vested interest to destroy potentially ruinous competition. However with the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, stevia could be imported into the United States, but sold only as a supplement and not as a sweetener. That's why stevia is now legally sold in the United States but can't be marketed as a sweetener.
Although stevia has been used by millions of Japanese people for over 30 years and generations of people in South America with no reported or known harmful effects, it remains almost an anonymous sugar substitute in the U.S. But the story of the FDA and its potential collusion with the artificial sweetener industry, doesn't stop here.
"At a Town Hall meeting held by Texas Congressman Joe Barton, a man held up two books. The first book is titled The Anarchist's Cookbook. It describes how to make homemade bombs. The second book is Cooking With Stevia: The Naturally Sweet & Calorie-free Herb. The book on making bombs is allowed, said the man, but the second book is not. That man is James Kirkland, author of the book on stevia. His book, and two others have been targeted for destruction by the Food and Drug Administration, a federal agency whose job is to oversee the safety of foods, drugs and cosmetics. The First Amendment protects the right of Americans to free speech whether it's a how-to book on making a bomb or baking with a calorie-free herb." (PURE FACTS: Jul-Aug, 1998, Vol. 22, No. 6, "FDA Attempts to Destroy Books on Natural Sweetener" posted here.
The following information has been provided by the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network, an organization composed primarily of people who have had adverse effects from the use of aspartame: "On May 19 FDA Compliance Officer, James R. Lahar faxed a letter to Stevita Company, addressing the destruction of 2,500 books he deemed 'offending,' at a cost to the company well in excess of $10,000. The letter further threatens that investigators will conduct a current inventory and 'witness the destruction of the cookbooks, literature, and other publications for the purpose of verifying compliance' upon visiting Stevita Co. for a fourth time this year.
"Oscar Rodes, President of the Stevita Company said the FDA ordered the action because the books contain general information that include history, usages and scientific studies regarding stevia. Currently, Federal law requires that stevia herbal products can only be marketed as dietary supplements without any mention of having sweetening power.
"Here's what Linda and Bill Bonvie had to say, when asked about the FDA wanting the book they authored destroyed in Arlington, Texas: 'The stevia issue, which we first reported in January of 1996 for New Age Journal, is one filled with contradictions and intrigue, secret trade complaints, searches and seizures, and generally intimidating FDA actions which, in the minds of many knowledgeable individuals, smack of a conspiracy between regulators and certain powerful commercial interests to keep this centuries-old sweet herb, which is used throughout the world, away from American consumers.'" (PURE FACTS: Jul-Aug, 1998, Vol. 22, No. 6, "FDA Attempts to Destroy Books on Natural Sweetener."
We at Ten Cent News have faith in our fellow Americans. As a nation, we are just people. But people must know the truth in order to dispense justice. The information placed in this article is brief, albeit to the point. We strongly encourage our readers to get all the facts before making a final judgment. If, after doing your homework, you agree with our assessment of George W. Bush, Donny Rumsfeld, the FDA and other odious persons/entities, then the time to act is now!
For more information on the aspartame conspiracy, we recommend the highly detailed book, "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic" by H. J. Roberts, M.D. "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills and Health & Nutrition Secrets" by neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D. Web sites: http://www.wnho.net and http://www.dorway.com, Aspartame Toxicity Center; Aspartame Information Group. The Idaho Observer publishes 24 page booklets for distribution on Rumsfeld Disease called the "Artificially Sweetened Times." The best available work on aspartame and the Rumsfeld conspiracy is a film titled Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World. "A Must See Movie that Can Literally Save Your Life. For those who have seen Sweet Misery—adjectives like 'incredible' are often used to encourage others to see the world's main experts on aspartame expose and invalidate the propaganda put out by the pharmaceutical industry. And those in the field of medicine who were directly involved with the making of this film maintain, 'Anybody who sees this movie will now know the whole story. . . . The fact that tons of aspartame is pumped into the world population each year, knowingly and deliberately—especially with the historical and documented record of fraud and misrepresentation expertly defined by this movie—constitutes a conspiracy of the highest order, as well as criminal negligence.' The only rewards of continued use of aspartame are increased profits for the medical and pharmaceutical industries and chemical companies that produce aspartame and treat people suffering from its toxic deadly effects. I could not encourage you more strongly to watch this documentary—your life may well depend on it."
Follow-up
"How sweet it is to be let off the hook." In a renewed examination of aspartame, the prestigious Ramazzini Foundation not only linked the artificial sweetener to cancer, but claimed that cancer could be caused by half the World Health Organization's acceptable daily intake of 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight of the chemical. (New Scientist, 6 May, p 40). Because the study was done by a respected cancer institute, several national food safety authorities, including the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the US Food and Drug Administration, were concerned enough to review the findings.
However, six months after reports that aspartame caused cancer in rats, surprise, surprise: the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) declared on 5 May that the controversial research was flawed. We might wonder out loud if then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's boss (George W. Bush) worked his magic to help keep such a potentially damaging story from exploding in the press right in the middle of his Iraqi war woes? (From issue 2551 of New Scientist magazine, 13 May 2006, page 5. See related story in the Feb. 12, 2006 edition of the New York Times article "The Lowdown on Sweet".
