Major Evidence and Studies, Pass this important information on. Ever wonder so much cancer and disease well here it is.

Aspartame is found in about 6000 products around the world, including carbonated soft drinks, powdered soft drinks, chewing gum, confections, gelatins, dessert mixes, puddings and fillings, frozen desserts, yogurt, tabletop sweeteners, and some pharmaceuticals such as vitamins and sugar-free cough drops.

Should have warning labels like smokes, this is poison. Education of our youth, it is the most important thing we can do.

Awareness and everyone stop buying there poison.

Dangers of Aspartame Poisoning
The dangers of aspartame poisoning have been a well guarded secret since the 1980s. The research and history of aspartame is conclusive as a cause of illness and toxic reactions in the human body. Aspartame is a dangerous chemical food additive, and its use during pregnancy and by children is one of the greatest modern tragedies of all.
Why haven't you heard about aspartame poisoning before? Partly because the diet industry is worth trillions of American dollars to corporations, and they want to protect their profits by keeping the truth behind aspartame's dangers hidden from the public. When NutraSweet® was introduced for the 'second' time in 1981, a diet craze revolutionized America's eating protocols and a well-oiled money machine was set into motion changing modern lifestyles.
After more than twenty years of aspartame use, the number of its victims is rapidly piling up, and people are figuring out for themselves that aspartame is at the root of their health problems. Patients are teaching their doctors about this nutritional peril, and they are healing themselves with little to no support from traditional medicine.

Aspartame Information:

*
Aspartame Side Effects
*
Aspartame Case Histories
* Phenylalanine
* Phenylketonuria

Aspartame Detoxifcation:

* How to Detox
* Read about SweetPoison
* Contact Janet Hull

What can you do about aspartame poisoning?
Set an example by changing your diet.

* Tell everyone you know.
* Talk to the schools and day care centers. Offer to speak at parent-teachers meetings.
* Contact your local, state, and Federal government representatives.
* If you see someone with a diet drink, ask if they have had any of the typical aspartame side effects.
* Spread the word at your work.
* Distribute the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network and Pilot's Hotline number: 1-800-969-6050 or 1-214-563-4268.
* Tell your doctor about the scientific research available proving the negative side effects of aspartame.
* Register a complaint with the FDA, the FAA, the NutraSweet Company about aspartame poisoning.
* Return all food products with aspartame, opened or unopened, to your grocer. Tell him/her the products make you sick. The grocer can return them to the manufacturer for a store refund. The manufacturer should get the message. So, will the grocer.
* Spread the word on computer networks.
* Publish articles in newsletters at your church, place of work, or neighborhood association.
* Set a personal example for health and wellness.

Read more about Aspartame Side Effects
Awareness about sweeteners
Become aware of all unnecessary chemicals hidden in your foods. Be a food detective. Purify your diet as much as possible, and try to enjoy natural eating. Drink more purified water than any other beverage. Cut back on artificial food substitutes. Get back to the basics of eating and exercise regularly.
Read more about Aspartame and other Sweeteners
Phenylalanine - Aspartame Poisoning
Nutrition fact about Phenylalanine in aspartame:
The 1976 Groliers encyclopedia states cancer cannot live without phenylalanine. Aspartame contains 50% phenylalanine.
Phenylalanine is one of the essential amino acids found in proteins, but I am one of the believers that amino acids should be eaten in combination, not in isolated form. Nature provides amino acids in combination; only man isolates them for processing purposes.
Phenylalanine is found naturally in foods such as eggs, milk, bananas, and meat. If you are PKU (Phenylketonuric) or sensitive to phenylalanine, you will react to the phenylalanine in aspartame. You many want to get a blood test to check for this condition. Over the past 20 years, humans have become more aware of PKU reactions because human beings began using isolated phenylalanine to the degree it is harmful to some individuals, many as aspartame side effects. My suggestion would be to research PKU and phenylalanine extensively. Phenylalanine can be very harmful to diabetics.
Read all food labels and avoid anything with isolated amino acids. You want to buy products with at least eight amino acids in combination.
Read more about Phenylalanine and Aspartame
Aspartame and PKU
This sugar substitute, sold commercially as Equal and NutraSweet, was hailed as the savior for dieters who for decades had put up with saccharine's unpleasant after taste. There are quite a few problems with aspartame. The first is phenylketonuria (PKU). One out of 20,000 babies is born without the ability to metabolize phenylalanine, one of the two amino acids in aspartame. Toxic levels of this substance in the blood can result in mental retardation. Beyond PKU, several scientists believe that aspartame might cause altered brain function and behavior changes in consumers. And many people have reported the following side effects from aspartame:

* Fibromyalgia Syndrome and symptoms of Fibromyalgia
* Multiple Sclerosis symptoms
* Dizziness
* Headaches
* Menstrual problems

Read more about Aspartame and Phenylketonuria
Aspartame Dangers
The dangers of aspartame poisoning have been a well guarded corporate secret since the 1980s. The research and history of aspartame dangers is conclusive as a cause of illness and toxic reactions in the human body. Aspartame dangers are the result of its chemical structure, and its use during pregnancy and by children is one of the greatest aspartame dangers of all.
Aspartame dangers are the common denominator for over 92 different health symptoms at the root of modern disease. The Aspartame Detoxification Program demonstrates the most effective way to reverse aspartame dangers by removing the underlying cause - aspartame.

Aspartame Disease
I counsel aspartame victims worldwide and witness nine out of ten clients restore their health by following the Aspartame Detoxification Program. Recovery from Aspartame Disease begins with detoxifying your body of all residual chemical toxins from aspartame’s chemical structure of phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol and their toxic by-products.
Many contemporary health practitioners call modern disease syndromes ASPARTAME DISEASE because aspartame is at the root of diseases such as:
aspartame fibromaylagia, aspartame restless leg syndrome, aspartame and migraines, aspartame and vaginal irritation, aspartame and tumors, aspartame allergy, aspartame multiple sclerosis, bladder cancer aspartame, aspartame and central nervous system, aspartame & infertility, aspartame and weight control, aspartame and weight gain, and aspartame Parkinson's Disease. The chemical structure of aspartame causes the body to mimic these disease symptoms, but bottom line, it's aspartame disease.

Aspartame Structure
The structure of aspartame seems simple, but what a complicated structure aspartame really is. Two isolated amino acids in aspartame are fused together by its third component, deadly methanol. In this structure, methanol bonds the two amino acids together, but when released at a mere 86 degrees Fahrenheit, the methanol becomes a poisonous free radical.
Methanol breaks down into formic acid and formaldehyde, embalming fluid. Methanol is a dangerous neurotoxin, a known carcinogen, causes retinal damage in the eye, interferes with DNA replication, and causes birth defects.

Aspartic acid makes up forty percent of the structure of aspartame. Under excess conditions, the structure of aspartic acid can cause endocrine (hormone) disorders and vision problems. Aspartic acid is a neuroexicter, which means its structure affects the central nervous system. Hyperactivity is stimulated by aspartic acid, so this structure is not good for ADD/ADHD conditions and should be avoided during pregnancy.

Adverse reactions to aspartic acid are: headaches/migraines, nausea, abdominal pain, fatigue, sleep disorders, vision problems, anxiety attacks, depression, and asthma/chest tightness. The second isolated amino acid in aspartame's chemical structure is phenylalanine, fifty percent of aspartame's 3-D structure. Too much phenylalanine causes seizures, elevated blood plasma, is dangerous for pregnancy causing retardation, PMS caused by phenylalanine's blockage of serotonin, insomnia, and severe mood swings.
Read more about Aspartame Side Effects
Read more about Aspartame Detoxification
Related:
Aspartame Victims Support Group
Official site for aspartame victims support e-mail group where victims can discuss issues of aspartame recovery and aspartame activism.


This here is documented all over and very alarming


Aspartame, "Rummy", Monsanto, Bayer, IGFarben....

Posted By: hobie
Date: Wednesday, 7 November 2001, 3:17 p.m.

In Response To: IS MONSANTO IN CHARGE OF NEW AIRLINE 'BLACKLIST'? (PuzzlePieces)

Aspartame: Sweet Poison: Hustler, December 1994
by Alex Constantine alexx12@mediaone.net

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 fed. (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 ware
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)

At the FDA, Hayes used aspartame as a political statement that
the Reagan administration was embarking on a grand voyage
of conservative "regulatory reform," sluicing through treasonous
liberal constraints on "free enterprise." Despite what one FDA
scientist described as 'very serious' questions concerning pivotal
brain tumor tests, Hayes eagerly approved aspartame for use
in dry foods in July 1981. (39) Three FDA scientists advised against
the approval of aspartame, citing G.D. Searle's own brain
tumor tests, because there was no proof that "aspartame is safe
for use as a food additive under its intended conditions of
use." (40)

Hayes has since declined to answer any questions about his decision,
which ignored the recommendations of the FDA's own
board of inquiry. He relied instead on a study conducted by
Japan's Ajinomoto, Inc.-- a licensee of G.D. Searle. Hayes
acknowledged in his 1981 decision that he had only consulted a
preliminary report of the Japanese evaluation, and only
skimmed it. More serious, Hayes violated federal law by basing
approval on the test, as it had not been reviewed by the FDA
board. (41)

Who is Arthur Hull Hayes? He was no disinterested bureaucrat.
True to the biochemical theme of the aspartame story, Dr.
Hayes served in the Army Medical Corps in the 1960s. According
to the Washington Post, Hayes was assigned to Edgewood
Arsenal at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the Army's chemical warfare
base of operations, "one of a number of doctors who
conducted drug tests for the Army on volunteers . . . to determine
the effect of a mind-disorienting drug called CAR 301,060."
According to a declassified 1976 report prepared by the
Army Inspector General, Hayes had planned a research study to
develop the mind-altering CAR 301,060 as a crowd control agent.
In 1972, Hayes left Edgewood Arsenal, and a new plan for
the experiments was drawn up by Edgewood physicians.
The 1976 report notes that similar tests had been conducted before
Hayes took charge. ( 42)

Also at the center of the effort to land FDA approval of
NutraSweet stood Donald Rumsfeld-- "Rummy" to his friends --
chairman of G.D. Searle upon leaving the Ford administration in 1977.
Rumsfeld, the product of a wealthy Chicago suburb,
was a Princeton graduate and a Navy pilot during the Korean conflict.
He entered politics as a Congressional House aide
attending night classes at Georgetown University Law School,
which is closely aligned with the CIA. (43)

Rumsfeld campaigned ambitiously for Richard Nixon, who drafted
him to direct the Office of Equal Opportunity on May
26,1969. He quickly established an office to spy on his employees
in a holy crusade to flush out "revolutionaries" said to be
granting federal funds to politically subversive organizations-
a throwback to McCarthy's tantrums. (44) Rumsfeld also figured in
Nixon's notorious Power Control Group, spearheaded by
Charles Colson and John Ehrlichman. (45) Gerald Ford named
Rumsfeld executive chief of staff upon the resignation of Al Haig.
In 1986 he was named chairman of the Institute for
Contemporary Studies, a neoconservative "think tank"
(read: propaganda mill) established in 1972 by Edwin Meese and
Caspar Weinberger. ICS has sponsored such opinion-shaping
projects as a study of expansions in "entitlement programs" and
their erosive effects on the economy, and a book on the uses of
coercion by Communist regimes. (46) Rumsfeld, at 43, became
the county's youngest secretary of defense. For many years he
has been a vocal proponent of chemical weapons. (47) He is
chairman of the Rand Corp. (48) In 1988, he dropped a
presidential bid, and was named a v.p. of Westmark Systems, led by
past NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman. Rumsfeld was one of
Westmark's founding directors, sharing the board with Joseph
Amato, a former vice president at TRW (and a colleague of
Inman's at the National Security Agency), and Dale Frey,
chairman of the General Electric Investment Corp. (49)

Rumsfeld, a veteran political operative, was an adept at the
vulgar art of public relations. He was recruited by G.D. Searle
because he had "a Boy Scout image,"
according to one company official. (50)

A house politician was precisely what Searle
needed to compensate for the damage done by independent
researchers concerned about the toxic effects of aspartame. In
March 1976, an FDA task force brought into question all of the
company's testing procedures between 1967 and 1975. The
task force described "serious deficiencies in Searle's operations
and practices which undermine the basis for reliance on
Searle's integrity." The final report of the FDA task force noted
faulty and fraudulent product testing, knowingly misrepresented
findings, and instances of "irrelevant or unproductive animal research
where experiments have been poorly conceived,
carelessly executed or inaccurately analyzed." (51)

Richard Merrill, the FDA's chief counsel, petitioned Samuel K. Skinner
U.S. Attorney for the northern district of Illinois, for a
grand jury investigation of Searle's "willful and knowing failure"
to submit required test reports, and for "concealing material
facts and making false statements" in reports on aspartame
submitted to the agency. (52) Yet industry analysts, interviewed by the
Wall Street Journal six months after Rumsfeld's appointment
as chairman, noted a rapid turnabout in Searle's fortunes as a
result of his direction. (53)

Searle denies that Chairman Rumsfeld ever had any contact
with the FDA, or the Carter and Reagan administrations, to lobby
for aspartame. (54) But the Wall Street Journal article reported in
1977 that Rumsfeld
"keenly understands the importance of a public image.
So he has been mending fences with the FDA by
personally asking top agency officials what Searle should do to
straighten out its reputation." Westley M. Dixon, Searle's
vice chairman, told the Journal that without Rumsfeld "we wouldn't
have gotten approval for Norpace," a drug investigated by the FDA in
1975. (55)

The grand jury investigation of Searle disintegrated in January, 1977
when the FDA formally requested that Samuel Skinner,
U.S. attorney and a protege of Illinois Governor James Thompson,
investigate the firm for falsifying and withholding aspartame
test data. A month later, Skinner met with attorneys from Searle's
Chicago law firm, Sidley & Austin. Jimmy Carter ascended
to The presidency a few weeks later. He announced that Skinner
would not be asked to remain in office, but the outgoing
Republican wasn't found wanting for employment. He informed
reporters that he had already begun "preliminary discussions"
with Sidley & Austin. (56)

G.D. Searle and Sidley & Austin are Siamese Twins. Edwin Austin,
a senior partner in the law firm, was appointed to the
Illinois Supreme Court in 1969. The Searle family drew upon his
services extensively, and he taught Sunday school in Wilmette,
a Chicago suburb, as did Dr. Claude Howard Searle, whose
father cofounded the pharmaceutical house.

The firm is grafted to the beating heart of the Republican party.
Morris Leibman of Sidley & Austin was for many years
chairman of the American Bar Association's "Standing Committee
on Law and National Security," a position that won him
Reagan's Medal of Freedom in 1981. (57)

John E. Robson, head of Sidley & Austin's Washington office,
was appointed executive vice-president of Searle & Co. in
1977, the same year Skinner was named a partner in the law firm.
Robson, too, was active in Republican politics. He was the
first General Counsel of the Department of Transportation, and at
the behest of Gerald Ford in 1975, chairman of the Civil
Aeronautics Board. (58) He moved on to Searle, and stayed with
the company until it was bought outright by Monsanto in 1985.
Howard Trienens, a law clerk to the late chief Justice Vinson in
the early 1950s, was a G.D. Searle director and worked for
Sidley & Austin since 1949. (59) Archconservative California
Governor George Deukmejian joined Sidley & Austin's Los
Angeles branch upon leaving office in 1991, and is reportedly
making a "very comfortable" living. He has a keen "sense" for
bringing in corporate clients, a partner in the firm told the
Los Angeles Times, many of them past contributors to his campaign
fund. Deukmejian's business connections have given him a reputation
as a Sidley & Austin "rainmaker," but the L.A. City
Council has questioned his ethics in promoting a contract with
Sumitomo Corp. on a metropolitan railway project. (60) Searle
aside, Sidley & Austin has served some of the most notorious
special interests in the country. The firm lobbied overtime, for
instance, on behalf of Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings & Loan,
and provided counsel on tax issues and dealing with federal
authorities. The firm assisted Keating when Lincoln was foundering,
and curried political favor to keep the S&L operating
despite massive debts. As a result, the firm was forced to settle with
Lincoln depositors in 1991, agreeing to cover an excess of
$40 million in claims. (6l) Sidley & Austin also represented the AMA
when a group of drugstore chains sued seven drug
makers-including Searle-for price fixing and antitrust violations.
The lawsuit, filed in October 1993, amounts to billions of
dollars in compensation. (62)

Skinner recused himself from the Searle prosecution four months
before leaving offtce-asking, in a memo to subordinates, that
the matter be kept "confidential to avoid any undo embarrassment"-
a stall that nearly allowed the statute of limitations to expire.
William Conlon, a senior U.S. attorney, inherited the case.
He eased off, citing case load pressures, and gave a deaf ear to
complaints of delays from the Justice Department, which urged
that a grand jury be convened to prosecute Searle for falsifying
NutraSweet test data. In January, 1979, Conlon too joined Sidley &
Austin. (63)

The 33-page letter from Merrill to Skinner charged Searle with
criminal fraud in its animal test results. In 1984 Common Cause
asked Dan Reidy of the U. S. attorney's office how the investigation
had stalled. Reidy replied that because it was a grand jury
investigation, he was "bound by law to secrecy." A Searle spokesman
exploited the demise of the grand July claim that there
was "no validity to the charges, that the company had been
"exonerated."

Philip Brodsky, an investigator for the FDA,
expressed surprise that Searle hadn't been indicted.
"I thought surely they would prosecute them," he said. (64)

Eleven years later Senator Metzenbaum issued a press release
charging Skinner with stalling the criminal investigation as he
prepared to decamp from office. Metzenbaum and his staff
demanded an FBI investigation of Skinner's mishandling of the
case. In December 1988, the conflict-of-interest bombshell
blew up in the face of newly elected George Bush, who was about
to appoint Skinner to the position of Transportation Secretary. (65)

Like most of the Machiavellians in the NutraSweet story,
Samuel Knox Skinner kept company with hardright Republicans. He
entered politics as a campaign volunteer for Barry Goldwater. (66)
In 1975, he was appointed to Federal Prosecutor in Chicago
by President Ford. Sidley & Austin promoted him to senior partner
after only one year with the firm. Skinner was the director
of George Bush's presidential campaign in Illinois. On occasion he
was berated for his involvement with the state's Republican
apparatus: In 1987, for instance, the Chicago SunTimes linked him
with a clutch of lawyers close to Governor Thompson, who
were awarded lucrative assignments handling the affairs of financially
crippled insurance companies. Skinner was a leading light
of the Illinois Fraud Prevention Commission - he targeted welfare cheats

(as opposed to white-collar criminals in the drug industry)--
and President Reagan's Commission on Organized Crime.
In December 1991, he left Transportation to take the
position of President Bush's Chief of Staff. (67)

"A Shocking Story"
Had Skinner pressed on with the investigation, aspartame's
manufacturer would have been forced to explain a long history of
fabricated laboratory tests and slippery dealings with federal
regulators, not to mention the public.

Dr. Alexander Schmidt, a former FDA commissioner, said of
the original Aspartame Task Force investigation: "What was
discovered was reprehensible. . .incredibly sloppy science."
A 1980 public board of inquiry opined that the company's testing
procedures were "bizarre." (68)

Searle's decision to market aspartame culminated with the falsification
of test results to obtain FDA approval . In November
1969, officials of the firm hired Dr. Harry Waisman, a researcher for
the University of Wisconsin, to test for brain damage in
rhesus monkeys. Seven monkeys were fed aspartame for periods
up to one year. In the end, though, the evaluation flopped
because the technicians failed to perform the intelligence tests and
autopsies required to determine brain damage. When
questioned about the false data by the FDA, Searle officials claimed to
have had no direct control over the study. But the
protocol for the study was written by a Searle pathologist *after*
it had begun. And, according to Dr. Gross, "Frequent
high-level communications took place between Searle executives
and Dr. Waisman prior to and during the study." (69)

To make matters worse, Dr. Waisman died in March, 1971, in mid-study.

Searle submitted the toxicity test to the FDA on October 12, 1972.
It bore Dr. Waisman's name as coauthor. Richard Merrill
noted: "Dr. Waisman was the expert in the field and his name would
carry great weight," but complained to Skinner that Searle
took "great literary license" in drafting the report,
"which covers up the admitted inadequacy of the design, control and
documentation of this study." (70)

Searle submitted some 150 test reports, yet Dr. Martha Freeman
of the FDA Bureau of Drugs noted in a 1973 memo, "the
information provided is inadequate to permit an evaluation of the
potential toxicity of aspartame." (71) The FDA task force set
up by Dr. Schmidt in 1975 reviewed 25 studies on seven products
manufactured by G.D. Searle, a total of 500 pages and
15,000 exhibits. (72) Searle was held to be the author of "reports
that the FDA believes contain false information" and
"concealed facts resulting from having drafted Dr. Waisman's 'pilot'
monkey study so that it would *appear* to be a valid,
thorough scientific study," and not a forgery